5 ANKI MISTAKESAND HOW TO AVOID THEM

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I first learned about Anki and spaced repetition two years ago. I was excited. The possibilities! To learn faster. To forget nothing.

No more struggling with tests. No more wondering what a book that I’d already read was about. No more forgetting a piece of code, a command line flag, or the order of function arguments.

And that was only the beginning of my ambition. The party tricks, oh god, the party tricks! I could learn to recite the presidents backward. Women would throw themselves at me–like invasive Asian Carp leaping into a boat motoring down the Mississippi.

I’d have women and prestige–the prestige! I’d be the next Isaac Newton, connecting concepts across disparate fields. But smarter. Like Isaac Newton if Isaac Newton had known about Ad-derall. Slicing through philosophical quandaries. No problem too big! The Millennium Prize would be a tiny step on my giant jour-ney.

Today, I’m still excited about Anki. I’ve memorized 11,688 virtual flashcards, as of this writing. I know more now than I’ve ever known before.

Sure, some of my expectations didn’t pan out. I haven’t made pro-gress on those Millennium problems and, most of the time, women don’t throw themselves at me.

But some of it has. I have a couple party tricks, and an arsenal of anecdotes that borders on annoying. Perversely, writing is harder these days because there’s so much I could tell you.

Like about Kim Peek, the guy who could read two pages at a ti-me–one with each eye, and had perfect recall of every book he read.

But I’ll have to save that for a future email.

I do sometimes make connections across subjects–it’s a rush. I like to think that I think more interesting thoughts, that I more of-ten have something novel and relevant to inject into a discussion.

Listen: I made a lot of mistakes. I fucked up a lot of cards. I mean, I don’t know if I’d say the experience was hard won. I

INTRODUCTION

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didn’t exactly go through a world war or an ampu-tation.

But I’ve spent a lot of time on a lot of reviews.

So here I am, writing. Still excited about Anki. I’m going to tell you about 5 mistakes that I routinely see beginners make–and that I made–, and what you can do to avoid them.

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When I first got into Anki, I had this naive model of how my own memory worked.

That model did not survive experimental testing.

Example: I believed that, once something had been memorized, it could be recalled whenever I needed to know it.

This is not at all the case. Not even close. I mean, we’re talking distance between planets not even close. Distance between me and my exes close.

You know. Not close.

Memory limitation #1: You can only recall a subset of relevant things that you know at any time.

You can verify this fact yourself. Sit down and sketch up a gro-cery list. Spend 15 minutes and try to make it exhaustive. Try to remember everything that you need.

Then, come back to this list, say, tomorrow morning. I guarantee that you’ll realize that you’ve missed a few things.

1. NOT THINKING OF CARDS AS CUES.

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Listen: This naive conception of memory leads to at least one substantial failure mode–memoriz-ing things only one way.

Here’s the problem: when you memorize some-thing, your brain doesn’t strip that something of its context. It’s not just an abstract entity floating around in your head.

No, it’s deeply entwined with that context.

Say you’re trying to learn a new vocabulary word, like bellicose. To do so, you write example sentences, getting a feel for it.

Except each of your example sentences has to do with hippo wrestling. Stuff like, “The bellicose hippo thought he had the upper-hand, until I un-leashed my signature move: the hungry hungry headlock.”

Now, the word bellicose and the idea of hippo wrestling are linked in your mind. Whenever you think of one, you’ll think of the other.

Takeaway: Think of Anki cards as cues for cer-tain thoughts. On the face-up side, you put the cue. On the other side, place the thought you want to have.

Each card is cementing a connection between two things.

Back to the vocab example.

You want to absorb some new word. Like hagiog-raphy.

A beginner will make one card: “hagiography” on the cue side, and the definition on the other side. In this case, “adulatory writing about another per-son.”

Don’t do that. Or, rather, don’t do only that. Think about what it means to know a word.

You need to understand both its definition, and you need to know when to use it. That means you need to associate the word with the defini-tion and vice versa.

If you just memorize hagiography->definition, you’ll recall the definition whenever you see the word “hagiography.”

But when you’re in a situation where you want to say “adulatory writing about another person,” you’ll be pulling your hair, thinking: what was that word again?

Treat flashcards as behavioral cues. Memo-rize backwards and forwards.

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It springs upon us, unbidden, while we’re doing whatever. (And by “whatever,” I mean showering, because that’s where it usually strikes.)

The world shifts beneath us. In the restructuring that follows, something heretofore unseen is obvious. Two separate-appearing things are revealed to be one. A unification–like the triggering of a fusion bomb.

Eureka! Two phenomena are just elaborations on one concept.

Insight! I’m talking about insight.

If you think back to your last aha! moment, you’ll find that it fits into a broader pattern. It’s when you realize that two things that you thought were unrelated actually have an intimate connection.

And it’s not just any two things. It’s going to be two things that you’d been thinking about recently.

Example: I had one Anki card on the structure of the naive fibo-nacci algorithm. The computation is in the shape of a tree, which implies that the algorithm is exponential.

2. USING MULTIPLE DECKS.

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I also had a card about a concept called a pedi-gree collapse. The basic idea is that, if you chart everyone’s family tree, eventually you run out of enough people on Earth. The chart col-lapses–the whole thing gets more incestuous.

After thinking about both of these things, I had a eureka moment. The pedigree collapse is a nec-essary fact of exponential growth–a family tree looks just like the calculation of that naive Fibo-nacci algorithm.

These two facts about the world are intimately connected! They can both be represented in the same way.

My point: Insight is the process of connecting two things that don’t seem connected. A neces-sary (but not sufficient) condition for insight is the activation of both concepts in memory during a short-enough time period–say an hour.

This production of insight is facilitated by the pair-ing of unnatural things. It’s impaired by categoriz-ing information by subject.

If you think about biology as biology and physics as physics, you’ll miss all the ideas that can transfer between the two. The most fertile ground for insight!

So: Don’t categorize your flashcards into dif-ferent decks.

Mix them all together! Anki is a perfect vehicle for the creation of insight, a creative catalyst. The cards are naturally shuffled such that, as long as you adopt a 1-deck system, unnatural concepts will end up paired.

Not just once in a blue moon, either, but each day you’re going to be reviewing dozens of other-wise unconnected facts.

Each ripe for insight.

Here’s how to fix this if you have multiple decks:

1. On Anki’s main screen, click browse.

2. Navigate to a deck, select all your cards, then click “change deck” near the top of the program.

3. Combine two decks.

4. Repeat until everything is combined.

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I’m not a bird.

But if I were a bird, I’m pretty sure that I’d be the kinda bird that has to make his own nest.

Just imagine how annoying the alternative would be. You’d find some other bird’s nest and set up camp.

And everything would be okay–at least until you started sneezing and itching all over. Because this nest is made out of hay.

Hay, of all things! What kind of birdbrain makes a nest out of hay!

Or, at least, that’s how I imagine it.

Listen: Anki decks are like that bird nest, but even more so.

If you download someone’s premade deck and try to use it, you’re gonna have a bad time. It just doesn’t work.

For two reasons:

1. Making your own cards is an integral part of the learning process–and if you don’t learn before you review, it’s horrible.

3. USING “FOUND” DECKS.

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Worse than a slog, it’s the hideous trek back to civilization after surviving a plane crash.

2. Your brain is weird. It’s unique–shaped by some part genetics and some part experi-ence. You need a nest that befits such a brain.

The takeaway: Always make your own decks. Customize them to you. As much as possible.

That brings me to my next point.

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When first starting with Anki, there is this impulse to write flash-card questions as if you were writing a classroom test. Such cards tend not to rely on any specific knowledge that you your-self posses, but instead are suitable for some generic person that would want to learn these things.

This is understandable. After all, for more than 10 years of your life you’ve been conditioned to associate learning with education; knowledge with tests.

So you end up with this concept of what a question ought to look like, and it’s modeled after what you saw in school.

Don’t do this.

Think, instead, about everything you know as a spider’s web. When memorizing something new, your sole job is to connect that concept to all the relevant things you know.

If you just memorize a definition, for instance, that’s like connect-ing something to the outside of your web.

4. NOT REFERRING TO PERSONAL MEMORIES.

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You want to do the opposite. Push new concepts as deeply into the middle of your web as possi-ble.

Connect it to everything.

Listen: Your memory is a messy place. You don’t have a biology category in your head. There is no mental organ specifically for biology, nor one specific to math.

So don’t act like you do. Connect everything: math, embarrassing moments from adolescence, sexual fantasies. Everything.

How? Connect new Anki cards to as many of your memories as possible. Here’s a secret. When learning a new concept, ask yourself, “What does this remind me of?” and make a flash-card out of that connection.

Use your emotions. Dreg up personal memories, and for the love of Zeus use those. If the word lu-gubrious reminds you of the time your pet rabbit died, create a card like, “This word describes how I felt after Bugs died.”

Your memory is a spider’s web. Connect eve-rything. Make it personal.

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In the public discourse, there’s this sort of dichotomy about edu-cation. The argument is over whether children ought to learn via rote memorization or by, you know, actually understanding how things work.

This leads to very confused new Anki users.

See, there’s one problem with the debate. You need both. The goal of all learning is to affect long-term memory.

At least the platonic idea of learning. If you’re cramming for a test so that you can get a job that will not have anything to do with what you’ve learned in college, it might be perfectly rational to for-get everything.

But, if you’re learning a language, or a new skill, you want to re-tain it over the long-term. You want to build up your knowledge brick by brick–confident that you’re not going to forget the ba-sics.

5. FOCUSING ON MEMORIZATION, AND NOT KNOWLEDGE.

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–of course, this is not to imply that I’m arguing for rote memorization. My position could be summed up as: First understand, then memo-rize.

My point: Anki is not a memorization tool. It’s a learning tool. When you’re racking your brain, try-ing to figure out what you should memorize, your brain jumps to dumb examples.

Stuff like, “I could remember capitals or presi-dents or the periodic table.”

That’s because you’re thinking in terms of memo-rization.

Listen: Don’t go about your Anki usage this way. Don’t memorize. Learn.

Don’t ask, “What should I memorize?” Ask your-self, “What’s interesting?” and start there.

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1. Anki cards are cues. Let how you want to use the knowl-edge in the world shape your cues. Memorize definitions from word->definition and from definition->word.

2. Don’t use multiple decks. Insight is the product of serendipi-tous pairing of two seemingly unrelated ideas. Mix all your cards together.

3. Make your own decks. Your mind is unique–there is no one size fits all.

4. Refer to personal memories. Memory is like a spider-web. The more personal the connection with a new idea, the bet-ter.

5. Don’t think in terms of memorization. Think in terms of learning and interest. Don’t ask, “What should I memorize?” Ask, “What am I interested in?” and start making cards out of that.

SUMMING IT UP

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• For more on creating good Anki cards, check out Supermemo’s “Twenty rules of formulating knowledge.”

• For an introduction to the science of spaced repetition, see Gwern’s excellent introduction.

• For a broader overview of promising learning techniques from cognitive science, this is the best introduction.

• If you want a better handle on how your memory works, I recom-mend this book.

FURTHER READING

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