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Comment by misiti3780 | Hacker News Reader

I have been using SRS for everything in my life for the last 2.5 years and I have no doubt I will be doing ANKI flash cards on my death-bed someday (as depressing as that sounds). It's the single most important productivity hack I have ever discovered (when used effectively). I successfully used ANKI to learn a 2nd (and now 3rd language) and retain a lot of knowledge I acquire from books:

Other things I use it for:

* extending my english vocabulary

* wine knowledge

* retaining math theories

* world history

* receipts

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I think what really puts me off is the effort of building those cards. It’s not quite a productivity hack if I’m having to sit and spend hours making those cards (vs. someone making those cards - and effectively - for me in exchange for $$). I like memrise a lot for some languages though, and they’ve long been advocates for this technique by building an entire business around it. Not much good material for math/CS on it last I checked.

studies have shown that if you do not create the cards yourself, you do not retain the info as well. there is no free lunch.

Exactly, making the card is half of the trick to remembering. If you can’t commit to making your own materials you might as well forget about using things like this. Yes it’s harder, but no there is no shortcut for learning in life. Just like exercise you can’t fake doing the work.

There's a few decks I've seen for math/CS, but I haven't had much luck myself, and have resorted to making my own. I've been trying to figure out the best way to do it.

It's pretty easy to do with Supermemo. But, it's still not as easy/simple as making cards for vocab.

For a specific math/CS topic it's not too hard, just in general.

I find it’s less the act of making the cards and more the lack of tools. Its possible to make Anki cards on the iPad app but many features are missing. Perhaps I just need to try AnkiWeb.

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