Hacker News Reader

Comment by gobr | Hacker News Reader

Do you use Incremental Reading? I've tried many times but I don't see the point in it, probably never got it.

Anki way makes more sense.

Yeah I use it to read HN threads, articles from my RSS reader, Wikipedia pages, code that I want to review etc. Also, material that I need to make into flashcards eventually. The ability to schedule a chunk of text and then turn it into flashcards in the same application is really valuable to me. I typically open a thread and import it a few days later after most of the comments are done. Right now I have ~40-50 tabs I will import in a few days.

This video [1] is the second step of the process, the first would be making that extract from an article or larger chunk of text imported. Often, I read a little bit of the text and just delete the whole entry if it turns out not to be good/interesting/useful to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8oyvBmevn8

Yes, I do, and I'd say the opposite. I started using incremental reading after using Anki for 11 years, and now, five years later, there is no way I would go back to the Anki style.

You can check my YouTube channel, 'Pleasurable Learning', for a course and many videos on how to get started with incremental reading.

Exactly. Incremental reading was touted as some ultimate productivity/pleasure hack but it's impractical for the real world were humans have to synchronize with each other's calendar. It may work for Piotr because he doesn't have a schedule to follow, at all.

When I need to read and learn, it needs to happen within a timeframe. Not "some day" when it shows up in my queue again.

What you describe fits the 'Plan' feature, not incremental reading. You don't sync with anyone other than your future self...

If you have deadlines for certain knowledge, then this can still be managed; it just requires some manual overruling via 'advance' or subset reviews.

That's usually not a problem. You can always schedule the reading of an element manually. And if you do that for the first repetition, it will not have any negative impact on the algorithm.

You can also put stuff in something called "pending queue" and then just pull it from there once you're ready for it.

Only for the subsequent repetitions the algorithm will take over. This is like reviewing notes basically.

Also, you can manually advance repetitions if needed, for example before an exam.

It works very well for me and I constantly have to (and want to) learn lots of stuff.

Incremental Reading in SuperMemo is essentially my default mode of reading for anything I expect to become part of "knowledge".

I don't use it for things like e-mail, news or fiction.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com