It took me several attempts to ascend the learning curve of Anki, but once I did, it changed my life. Anki Essentials by Alex Vermeer [0] was the introduction that got me over the hump.

Now I use Anki almost daily for learning programming, math, vocabulary, and retaining books I've read.

On books, I originally wrote a script that scraped the Kindle highlights page and converted them into a file that could be imported into Anki. I'd Cloze delete passages and review maybe 20 a day. That practice was so beneficial that I've since started developing it into a standalone product called Readwise. [1]

Readwise doesn't yet incorporate hardcore spaced repetition and active recall principles, but it will soon.

[0] https://alexvermeer.com/anki-essentials/ [1] https://readwise.io