Making SuperMemo Addictive - Slot Machines As Inspiration (Pictures, sounds, music)

One subject of great interest to me is the slot machine. Personally I do not gamble, but the entire casino and specifically the slot machine industry is fascinating.

Generally speaking, using a slot machine will result in a net loss for the user. Statistically, the user WILL lose money, and aside from the immediate stimulation and comfort of the machine, they leave that experience with NOTHING to show for it. Despite this basic fact, many people continue to willfully use these slot machines.

Why does such a contradiction exist? It seems that in order to compensate for the one big negative aspect of the slot machine, the creators do their best to max out every other positive aspect of the machine:

Comfortable chairs, pleasant sounds, fragrant smells, periodic wins (but not too many), buttons that feel good to touch, addictive algorithms, and so on. Basically the creators of slot machines make every possible effort to maximize the comfort level of the user so that these positive aspects outweigh the big negative aspect of it being a money sink.

If you remove the questionable ethics of the gambling industry, the slot machine is a great example of how you can make a negative thing FEEL positive.

I look at slot machines as the “level 100 Pokemon” in terms of making a negative activity addictive. If you want to gain some insight into the world of slot machine psychology, I would highly recommend the book “Addiction By Design.” The book is dense with useful information, very little fluff. Watching any talk given by the author (Natasha Schull) is also worth an hour of your time. I linked one of her talks in the picture of the book.

Specifically in the context of SuperMemo, i like thinking about “what can I do to make SuperMemo less like study hall and more like a slot machine?” Over the years I have experimented with how I use SuperMemo, and it has resulted in a few permanent SuperMemo routines:

1. Pictures on every card - slot machines are extremely visual, they often have pictures themed around popular IPs. Lesson: my flashcards would benefit greatly if they feature a picture (As long as it doesn’t give away the answer. In this case, the picture should appear when the answer is shown). Of the 110,000 cards in my database, probably less than 3% of them do not have any kind of picture associated with them. Almost every flashcard I have has a “logo picture” that identifies the type of knowledge represented. I have “logo cards” for foreign languages, books, “idea genres”, and so on.
2. Positive sounds - Slot machines all feature brief but pleasant sound effects that you don’t get tired of hearing repeatedly. Lesson: if possible, associate positive sounds with reviewing flashcards. Even before I got really into slot machine psychology I decided “pass” and “fail” needed their own sounds. Over the years I have used a number of different sound effects for “pass” and “fail,” right now I think I’m using the “menu select” sound from the Persona games. In the past I used the “dialogue done” sound from Ocarina of Time and the “menu select” sound from Pokemon Red/Blue. Video games and specifically RPGs are a good source for sound effects you don’t mind hearing repeatedly over time.
3. Music - Slot machine creators LOVE it when the machine features music that is nostalgic to the player (One of the reasons that “The Price is Right” slots are so popular). Lesson: Incorporating music into my flashcards will make them more fun to review. This has been more of a mixed bag, so I’m not sure if I would recommend going down the weird rabbit hole I have, but here it goes. Over the last six or seven years, I would daily take 5 songs that I loved and isolate 30 second chunks of the song that give me the most joy (Sometimes the same track contains multiple chunks). Ideally they would be spots in the song that would give me goosebumps. Using audacity I would record those 30 second snippets and use the tools in Audacity to make each chunk fade in and out. By the time you’re done, you basically have a ringtone of your favorite part(s) of a song. Doing this has been a fun little hobby over the years, since it has forced me to decide WHY I like a particular song. Long story short, I have about 4500 of these tracks, and it still grows by 2 or 3 tracks per day. Many of them are in SuperMemo and are played when a flashcard answer is shown. Often times I listen to drone or ambient music lightly while reviewing flashcards so the SuperMemo answer song acts as the “sprinkles” on top of the ambient vanilla ice cream that I’m enjoying. I don't really use SuperMemo as a jukebox, but a side effect of SuperMemo has been that I've tried to become more objective about what stuff I like. I think my weird little ring tone library is a manifestation of that.
4. 
   Wii Remote - Slot machine creators do their very best to make sure every aspect of the slot machine is enjoyable to touch, ESPECIALLY the aspects of the machine that the player interacts with (Touch screen, handle, buttons, etc.). Lesson: The process of doing SuperMemo should be fun to touch. It’s possible to use a mouse and keyboard to review 400 flashcards, but it’s not extremely fun. Shortly after the Nintendo Wii came out, I remember thinking to myself “I would LOVE to use a Wii Remote to review flashcards”. It wasn’t possible because our family computer didn’t have bluetooth and the dongles that I bought online weren’t compatible with the Wii Remote 😢. Eventually I bought the proper bluetooth adapter and learned some rudimentary programming with GlovePie to get my Wii Remote to do SuperMemo things on the family computer (A button = 4, B button = Enter, + button = Tab, etc.). For more than 15 years I have used the SAME Wii Remote for SuperMemo, a testament to the durability of Nintendo’s hardware design (Switch problems notwithstanding).
   

I guess those are some of the biggest lessons that have positively impacted my SuperMemo use over the years. If I think of something else, I'll write another post.

Also, I'm reading all of your comments and mail, and I'm trying to respond to them in a post and not just give you a quick sentence or two response. Thanks for your understanding 😅 

Little SuperMemo Machines

Throughout the years I have always been the small audience that Netbooks are aimed at. SuperMemo is a program that runs only on Windows (I’ve never messed with Linux or Mac programs that let you run Windows) and SuperMemo itself is as lightweight as an internet browser or email client.

For as long as I can remember I have purchased a new Netbook or an underpowered, cheap laptop every four years or so, solely for the purpose of doing SuperMemo. My most recent purchase was a Surface Go 1 in 2018. Essentially it is a Surface Mini with not very impressive specs, but it's THE PERFECT little SuperMemo machine for me.

Being able to hold a Windows computer as if it were an iPad makes activities like daily reviews and incremental reading much more fun. When reviewing my daily items, I use a Wii Remote that has the various buttons bound for frequently used SuperMemo actions, so it seldom requires the use of a keyboard or mouse.

Recently I have taken to detaching the keyboard cover and walking around our apartment, a Wii Remote in one hand and the Surface Go in the other. I keep a bluetooth keyboard and mouse on the table in case I need to type anything. This morning I walked 1.5 miles while reviewing about 300 flashcards!

It seems unlikely that we will ever get a fully functional mobile SuperMemo for the iPad, so for now this is the next best thing.

Using SuperMemo for Music?

Someone sent an email asking if I have ever used SuperMemo for learning music.

As much as I enjoy listening to music, I have never really pursued learning a musical instrument of any sort.

The only possibly similar thing I do is practice writing Chinese characters as part of my flashcards. The flashcard will say “write the Chinese character for xyz” and I have to write that character on a piece of paper (Shoutout to the "hipster pdf"). If I write the character correctly, the card is marked “correct.”

I imagine you could do something similar for practicing music; have a flashcard that asks you to play a particular section of music and depending on how well you can perform the piece, you can mark the flashcard as “correct” or “incorrect.” My only doubt is that I’m not sure if the rate of forgetting a piece of knowledge is the same as losing the muscle memory of performing a piece of music.

How SuperMemo Helped Build Momentum in Other Areas of Life

Before I started using SuperMemo, I don’t think I was a very studious or motivated person. I didn’t excel very much in school and outside of a few interests, my “character stats” felt pretty average; similar to Doug, the Nickelodeon cartoon character (Who was described as “painfully average” by his creator).

I started using SuperMemo after I finished high school (If only I started while I was in school 🤷🏻‍♂️), and I’m pretty sure it marked a turning point in who I was as a person. I don’t think I owe EVERY positive aspect of my life to SuperMemo, but SuperMemo certainly helped me to cultivate a really productive attitude towards the value of effort.

One thing I love about RPGs is the concept of the experience point. The idea is so appealing; by putting in effort to fight the same monsters over and over, your effort eventually accumulates and makes you into a better person. Even if an action is small, it still is not a waste since you are always progressing forward, towards greater things.

This kind of simple progression system doesn’t exist in real life. Stuff that you learn you eventually forget. Muscles atrophy. Former glory doesn’t guarantee future success. Any excuse for laziness is still just an excuse, but the lack of a meaningful feedback system can easily make learning seem less fun than something like a video game, something that DOES feature a meaningful feedback system. I played Mario 64 for a half an hour and now I have three more stars ⭐️. Can reading a book for 30 minutes give me the same meaningful assessment of my progress?

Anyways, SuperMemo started as a mere tool to memorize foreign language words, but the more I understood how effective it was, I could see exciting implications. If this tool helps me to remember the Japanese word for “one way ticket,” could I also use it to remember other important things?

Long story short: yes. In time i started to notice the entire feedback loop:

“Put forth effort to learn something - make flashcards to remember the things I learned - do my flashcards every day - Success! (Perfect memory)”

This kind of feedback loop is likely present in many other positive habits: exercise, learning to program, playing chess, etc. For me, it was SuperMemo. Once I experienced the long term benefits of this one habit, it becomes more plausible that I could also achieve similarly positive long term benefits in OTHER areas of life.

Eating healthier and exercising, practicing mindfulness, being organized with how I handle household chores, bills or other boring but important things, these are all areas in life that don’t provide immediate positive feedback, but it feels REALLY rewarding when these kinds of things “fall into place.”

Over time SuperMemo became less of a tool for memory and more of a single aspect of a self disciplined lifestyle (Like owning an iPod was the first step into the Apple ecosystem, it becomes easier to buy a Mac, iPhone, iPad, etc.). Eventually I tried to treat other aspects of my life the same way I treated SuperMemo: a thing that is worth doing but doesn’t pay off right away.

I have good days and bad days like anyone else, but having this consistent habit that I always do, it makes it easier to motivate myself to do other stuff even when I’m having an off day.

SuperMemo Ring

I have many friends that live in Canada. One time while visiting some of those friends in Toronto, at 10:30pm I suddenly realized that I still had about 30 flashcards yet to review in SuperMemo. Luckily I was able to complete them before going to bed, but that close call taught me a lesson: I need a system to catch myself in case I don’t finish my flashcards when I wake up in the morning.

My initial idea was to wear my watch on the opposite hand until I completed SuperMemo. This could have worked because I always wear a watch and normally I wear it on my left hand, so if it were on my right hand, this would feel out of place.

The idea that I ended up settling on was having a “SuperMemo ring.” I went to the local shopping mall and had my index finger measured, and then purchased a tungsten ring on Amazon for $20. I decided to put the ring on my left index finger, and after SuperMemo was done, I would switch it to my right index finger. For the last 12 years I have done the same thing, always switching my ring to my right hand after SuperMemo is done.

It is rarely even on my left hand since 99% of the time SuperMemo is done before I eat breakfast, but the few times that I have not finished SuperMemo in the morning, the ring is a constant reminder that part of my day is incomplete.

Using SuperMemo Daily (The early months)

When I first started using SuperMemo, I was not motivated to use it daily. Initially I was extremely confused that I would make flashcards one day and NOT be required to review them on that day (or even the next few days). This caused me to be VERY dismissive of SuperMemo early on (“I thought I made flashcards to REVIEW them, not to make them for the program to later say “You’re done!””).

After i used SuperMemo consistently for a few weeks I started to understand the power of spaced repetition based on the results. I was spontaneously remembering vocabulary words I never had actually used in conversations, all because they were in SuperMemo. It honestly felt like magic the first time I remembered the Japanese word for “doorbell” 😂 (呼び鈴, YOBIRIN).

After about two months or so of using SuperMemo daily, I realized that this was now a habit. I’m now “that guy/kid (19 at the time) that does flashcards every day.”

After a few months of daily SuperMemo use, and after it became an ingrained part of my daily routine, I came to realize that doing it early, as soon as I woke up, was the best thing for me. If it didn’t get done in the morning, there was a chance I would forget about it, aside from the fact that the rest of the day felt “off.” At some point it became my daily “main quest objective,” and my typical morning goal became “finish SuperMemo as early as possible.”

This sometimes became a problem when circumstances were abnormal, such as when traveling, staying at a friend’s house or when I sometimes have to work the late night shift. On these occasions I have gotten close to missing days, but after one close call I figured out a good long term solution that I will outline in another post.

The main point is that there was an initial “motivation hump” I had to get over, but after the benefits of SuperMemo “clicked”, SuperMemo became just another part of my life; just as eating, bathing or flossing are. Sometimes it requires some extra effort, but eventually the thought of skipping a day and messing up my multi-year streak is more painful than the effort of doing SuperMemo even when I’ve had a bad night of sleep.

Concentration Music

During my teenage years, I thought becoming a music nerd would be a cool thing, so I decided to do what I thought music nerds did: listen to a lot of music and keep track of what I really liked. This has carried over into my flashcard habit in many ways, and one of those is that I almost always listen to music while reviewing flashcards. Typically I listen to ambient, drone, or lo-fi music that doesn’t call much attention to itself. There are a number of artists that I really enjoy listening to while doing SuperMemo, here are a few of them:

Eluvium (Every album is very beautiful, some albums are more ambient, some are more melodic)

Stars of The Lid (Their ENTIRE discography is legendary in the world of drone music. If drone music were a video game, Stars of the Lid would be one of the final bosses)

Brian McBride (Side project of one of the guys behind Stars of the Lid)

The Dead Texan (Another side project by the other guy behind Stars of the Lid)

Tycho (Really good chill out music)

Loscil (Firmly in the camp drone music)

Colleen (Her ambient music reminds me of a story book)

Jonsi and Alex (Side project of Jonsi, the singer for Sigur Ros)

Susumu Yokota

Akira Kosemura (Nice piano music, BIG discography)

Serph

Bonobo

Yuki Murata (Beautiful piano music)

Home (Chill wave artist, responsible for the track “Resonance”, a wonderful song)

The Caretaker (Nostalgic and haunting, inspired by the music featured in a short ballroom scene from “The Shining”)

RPG soundtracks also work very well. Many of my flashcards have been done while listening to Skyrim exploration music.

Also of note is the YouTube Lo Fi Study music stream, sometimes I pop in there if I get up extra early (like 4:00am). It makes me feel like I’m in a special “early people only club”.

The single song that I have listened to the most (More than 400 times) is called “Midnight Souls Still Remain” by M83. It is a single track that drones on for 11 minutes. When I really need to “get in the zone” I love to listen to this track on repeat.

Updates 2022

 Hello! Here is an update to my SuperMemo life as of March 2022:

-Recently celebrated my 16th anniversary using SuperMemo, no skipped days.

-Currently I have 107,000+ items in total.

-I am getting close to finishing up a large scale mnemonic system for memorizing vocabulary words that covers multiple languages (This was a BIG fault in my previous system). Once I am confident of the results being solid, I’ll outline them in detail here.

As much as I love making sure that things are “just so”, if I were a SuperMemo beginner and wanted to learn more from a weirdo like me, I would much rather get regular, not-so-polished updates verses “up to standard” updates that are extremely seldom. Consider this a little experiment 😀👍🏻