These kinds of articles show up here frequently and I'm curious how people apply this to their actual work. Makes a ton of sense for school, but day to day how is this used by tech professionals?
During the day, I'll write down anything that I think's worth remembering. Usually that's how something I've read or done might affect my work in the future, but sometimes it'd just an interesting relationship I'd not noticed before or something random that catches my fancy. This either goes in today's daily note, or a reading/bibliography note if it came from a book or article I was studying. Maintenance is my first task every morning:
1. Do all of my outstanding Anki reviews
2. Extract yesterday's ad-hoc notes into evergreen notes, and file them appropriately. This is the most time-consuming part of the process, because I need to determine which of my existing notes are related and include cross-references. The filename of the new note is constructed to place it adjacent to whatever preexisting note is most closely related. I may also need to write some support notes here, if the new note relates to something I know but hasn't gotten a note yet.
3. Copy the text of all the new notes into Anki, and black out some key words in the second half of the card. I have Anki set to an aggressive schedule, so that I don't get bored of seeing any of the cards: 2,7, and 30 day intervals for learning, and then a 4x growth rate after that. The cards also include the ID, so that I can find them again in my notes.
I don't usually bother with a lot of detail in my notes; for that I can always go back and look up a proper reference. Instead, I focus on what problems different approaches are good at solving, how different things fit together, and anything else that might help me pick which technique to reach for in any given situation.
I guess this spaced repetition process is something I implicitly do — when I kept paper notebooks I’d go back and read through each as I finished it. Now I have a monthly review of the month’s notes.
Also I try to use things I learn, which often sends me back to my notes or a book (I remember better what I read on paper). This obviously makes more sense with computing and chemistry; it doesn’t typically link up the same way with, say, history :-).
Also if I read a book that sticks in my mind, I go back to it and flip around for the parts I found interesting. That’s also a kind of spaced repetition. I’m in a book club with several nerd friends; I couldn’t tell you the dozen books we read last year but two of them I could expound upon at length.
And of course at my age it’s waaay easier to learn new things as I have so much context to anchor it to. As a student everything was new and almost sui generis so it didn’t “stick” as well. For example, reading Strang is quite different now compared to when I took his class 30 years ago.
You can see it everywhere: non-fiction books are often padded with redundancy as a sloppier form of spaced repetition, people often only remember other's names after using it several times, etc.
The other principle is recall > re-exposure. Outside of highly emotional experiences, one of the best ways to encode a new memory, paradoxically, is to remember it. But to achieve this means our notes have to be converted into something like flashcards, so instead of reviewing them, you are always giving yourself a pop quiz. It takes me a long time (if ever) to remember how to get somewhere if I use Google Maps. If I have to find it myself, even once, I am very likely to remember.
As someone whose absent-mindedness is a constant low-level existential crisis (what are we but our memories?), I'm motivated to extend the process beyond the straightforward flashcard material within subjects like computing and chemistry. I really don't think history, general musings, or personal interactions are any different. It just isn't as obvious at first. Some non-traditional examples:
Q: What restaurant did Bob recommend for me to visit the next time I'm in Seattle? A: x
Q: What behavior adjustment did you tell your partner you are going to make to improve your communication? A: x
Of course you can do the same thing with facts in history _and_ with your personal takeaways from the information.
* Memorize keyboard shortcuts or commands for new programs
* Memorize key differences/things that I get mixed up frequently
* Memorize key details or flow for a meeting presentation/discussion with non-tech people
* Memorize things about your team members/co-workers/organization at a new job
* Memorize important dates or times (this works in one's personal life too)
The idea is that my brain power is finite and by using spaced repetition, I make as many things as possible 'auto-pilot' for my brain in order to leave more brain space for problem-solving and deep thinking.
Does it help with higher level critical-thinking-problem-solving work? Probably not. But one must walk before one can run, and to run, one needs a foundation of bulk-facts to work off of (in my case, kanji readings / meanings / particles).