> Not only are common practices like lectures, cramming, and re-reading boring, science has shown they don't even work well. But what if I said there's a way to learn that's evidence-based and fun? What if I said there's a memory card game you can play, for 20 minutes a day, to store anything you choose into long-term memory, forever?

A mistake I made when I first started experimenting with spaced repetition was treating it as a learning tool, as described above, rather than as a memorization tool. I'd create a bunch of cards with facts that I wanted to learn on them, then review my cards each day and hope that spaced repetition would help me learn what was on them. In reality, I learned very little.

What I've since discovered works much better for me is to separate studying and memorizing, and only create cards with facts that I already know on them. You might say "but why would I make a card with something I already know on it?", and this question reveals the mistake that most people make when it comes to remembering -- that just because they know something, it will be in their head forever.

I often still make this mistake whenever I learn something new. The important thing is to remind myself that without reviewing that information again at a later date, I will forget it. I've lost count of the amount of times I've figured out a problem and thought "great, I know this now!" only to run into the same problem a month later and forget what the solution was.