Yearly analytics on my spaced repetition results
natemeyvis.com
natemeyvis.com
For example, maybe I read a book that has a really key insight about how my brain works with ADHD. I’m not going to remember or apply that insight to my life unless I spend some time trying to remember it. By default it’s not going to stick for very long.
I see no reason why that is important.
Years ago, I memorized 1034 digits of pi just to see what it felt like (reciting pi from memory felt like walking through a forest at night without bumping into any trees). So, there was some value in that experience.
I wonder what this guy gets out of it?
Can you elaborate on this? I watch an unhealthy amount of University Challenge and I assumed that the vast majority of contestants would use flash cards as a trivia retention tool. Most people I've met who need to rely on large amounts of accurate but relatively dispersed knowledge (law students, say, or specific historical professions) use flash cards in one way or another. It surprises me greatly that 'professional quizzers' wouldn't. Perhaps _some_ of them wouldn't - I'm sure as with anything there are some who are preternaturally excellent.
Professional quizzers almost all use flashcards. Jeopardy! people definitely do. The range of questions that you can ask in a general knowledge quiz are surprisingly limited. You're not going beyond a surface-level overview on anything. Do a ton of general knowledge flashcards for a year and you'll annihilate people at pub quizzes.
I suppose you could just read encyclopedias over and over again, and books of lists.
Reminds me of that guy who "mastered the NYT Crossword" by flashcarding questions/clues. I also learned to do the Saturday consistently - just by doing the crossword every day for a while. You don't always need flashcards.
I found that when I went through the sequence, each chant felt like a little landmark that I could feel but not see. Hence, the sensation of having blindsight (Google it). When I tried to recite the digits as fast as I possibly could, my head started hurting as if I were being struck my tree branches.
I hadn't done any JS coding beyond a few examples from a tutorial.
There's no way I would have retained that knowledge otherwise.
There are many such examples. In general it's extremely useful for retaining things you are not going to develop muscle memory for.
"Memorizing by doing" is great if you're doing often. What if you're not?
2. I like trivia competitions.
3. I like making and using my own software.
4. Memorizing facts is an underrated way to become a better software engineer. Not the best way or even close to the best way, but an underrated way!
5. It enriches my experience of the world (I plan to write more about this soon).
> [...] But, ChatGPT and Gemini both tell me that these effects are not statistically significant, despite having pretty large sample sizes.
Imagine he instead learned how to calculate staristical significance instead so he didn't have to believe AI guesswork.
> For example, I only record the correctness of a response, not its subjective difficulty, and I mix in random cards with my study sessions to make it harder for me to guess the answer on the basis of when I'm seeing the card.
Sounds a bit like the Leitner system [1] with respect to recording only Correct/Incorrect responses. One of the reasons I avoided Anki for a long time was that I wanted to be able to answer cards quickly without actually looking at my phone. I ended up using a combination of automatic TTS, bluetooth headphones, and swipe-up/down gestures to indicate my response.
Made it much easier to go through cards while driving or during daily runs with my husky.
[1] - https://subjectguides.york.ac.uk/study-revision/leitner-syst...
I currently use a bespoke piece of software for this now but I've had great success in the past with Flashcards Deluxe (by Orange or Apple). It supports automatic TTS, answering by gestures, etc. I used to use it back when I had a long commute.
Of course, if you simply enjoy the process of memorizing facts, then no explanation is needed - it is entertainment for you, and comes with a benefit, like enjoying exercising. Otherwise, it does not seem like a remotely optimally productive way to achieve mastery in any field I am aware of, other than being a student who will be tested on fact memorization.
This is most peritent for language learning because you need to 'bootstrap' a large set of words and grammar, and you can't use all of them often enough to put them in long-term memory (at first).
Aside from foreign languages, I also use flashcards for English - more difficult words that show up rarely enough that I can't remember their definitions - and country flags.
For general learning too, if you need to keep looking something up over and over but can't seem to remember it, flashcards will bootstrap that into your brain and make future learning smoother. Obviously Internet/AI can help - but LLMs can't explain 100% of a topic in their reply, they always assume some level of abstraction, and the higher-level it is the faster you can absorb a topic.
Even in the Internet age, getting the latency from "fast" to "effectively zero" has a lot of value for staying in flow, synethesizing information, etc. Your memory is the ultra-low-latency fact retrieval system you always have. No, you definitely don't want to use it for everything, but it definitely does complement modern tools in important ways.
Or, hell, just for conversations, I’d love to better remember insightful things I read about and then promptly forgot.
https://www.encona.com/posts/custom-statistics-for-anki-flas...
2. A lot of my cards were also made in 2025 (and 2024), so I'm probably much farther to the left of you on the learning curve, on average.
Since you’ve been so consistent and are using your own software, have you experimented with different resurfacing rates? Did you notice a material difference in recall?
https://www.natemeyvis.com/22-reasons-i-did-301432-flashcard...
That information would help us all better assess whether the time spent on a spaced repetition flashcard system is justified
Do this many people use flashcards? Maybe I'm way too old. Probably.
That sounds like incredibly boring way to spend time. I'd aim for something like 20% at most. What's the fun in being asked things you already know?
You should be forgetting a lot in your life and learn a lot. Remembering is overrated. Learning the same thing second or third time gives you better understanding.
1. As others have said, the idea is to study something before you forget.
2. It's hard to predict when you're going to forget something, so you do wind up studying a bunch of stuff before you really have to. It's a limitation of prediction (and also of the technology as developed so far).
3. It really is pleasant to work to recall things even when you succeed at it. It does "freshen them up" in your memory. And sometimes just the experience of seeing a fact can be pleasant. (A lot of us review familiar things for the joy of it in other domains--movies, etc.)
I learned A* at least 5 times already. And each time I learn it, I feel like I'm having better appreciation and understanding of how it works. Each time I'm falling in different traps, make different mistakes, that teach me more. I wouldn't have that insight if I just memorized how to correctly implement it the first time and recalled it whenever I needed a new implementation. Also I'm perfectly happy not knowing how to implement A* in between times that I need it.
I would like to be reminded that things exist, after I forgot them, so 20% sounds way more fun for me.
Anyways, thanks for sharing your fun. Don't let me be a buzzkill. ;-)
* I'm using my own software
* I did 301,432 flashcard reviews in 2025.
* Those reviews covered 52,764 distinct cards.