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Comment by jstx1 | Hacker News Reader

As a working adult:

- don't take rigorous notes because it ends up replicating a lot of the material that I'm consuming anyway

- still write some notes if something interesting stands out; it's usually related to some core idea/explanation, not to technical details

- don't obsess over having "complete" notes or worry too much about organizing them

- try to write some relevant code alongside whatever I'm learning

- spaced repetition is for memorization; I'm not trying to memorize

This is different from how I used to learn for exams at school/university where I would repeatedly re-synthesize notes to a shorter and shorter format until I can reproduce the material from a cue.

I think the distinction between the two modes is important; it seems very weird to me to see knowledge workers putting so much effort to memorize stuff that they can look up anyway.

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> spaced repetition is for memorization; I'm not trying to memorize

Only if you use it as such. SRS is a scheduler to help you optimize your time, to not spend time on things you probably don't need to refresh. The actual memory/learning part is orthogonal.

I use SRS to plan different practices of things (in my case programming languages or concepts). If I consider that I did one of them well, I mark it as such and won't see it for a longer time, if not, I mark it badly and I'll see it again sooner.

This is accurate and interesting. I initially thought this was incorrect from strong association with it as a flashcard system, though your technique is consistent with the definition provided on this wiki created by community members [0].

I’m curious. If you would be willing to share, could you demonstrate an example of a prompt? My learning items have almost always been questions and answers, and occasionally image occlusion (‘label this part of the diagram’) and cloze deletion (‘fill in the blank’).

[0] https://www.supermemo.wiki/en/learning/spaced-repetition

You can just put it a whole math practice problem and solve it (with pen and paper, outside of the app), then mark it in the app.

I have several non-memorization type things. Some personal "get better" things, like... "I tell stories badly. I should avoid them." where I rate it a "2" for a "yeah, I did ok this week" or "1" if I transgressed. I put that into a deck that has a maximum review time of a week. I have other decks with similar things that expire in no more than a month, or a quarter.

For the tech things, the prompts are things like:

"Do an exercism.io exercise in <language>" where language is one of the programming languages I'm studying or want to keep "fresh"

"Write the basic 'counter' in React. With class compoments" or "... with functional components".

Things of that nature. Stuff I can get done in a half hour or less.

>Some personal "get better" things, like... "I tell stories badly. I should avoid them." where I rate it a "2" for a "yeah, I did ok this week" or "1" if I transgressed

I thought I was the only one that did this.

> - spaced repetition is for memorization; I'm not trying to memorize

I strongly agree. In the learning blogs (e.g. SuperMemo wiki) and forums I’ve read (r/Anki), there is a bias to solve every learning problem with space repetition (very roughly, flashcards on a computer program scheduled in an optimized way).

I’ve seen users try to make it work for math and physics, and though it may work for some users, the approach was ultimately a distraction in my experience, from doing lots of practice problems.

SRS pays off in the long run. If you didn't practice it with discipline for a bare minimum of 4-6 months, you won't see much effect.

I think memory plays a key role in learning and especially recognizing opportunity to use something I've learned.

You can improve memorization efficacy through conceptual understanding. Memorization of arbitrary information is always difficult unless you can lace these with meanings.

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