-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 😀👍🏻
Wow, Congratulations on having 107,000+ items! I'm a SuperMemo beginner and I'd like to ask you some questions.
ReplyDeleteAs a person with over 100,000 items, do you have any tips on gaining the motivation to make items daily? Also, do you have a particular workflow for adding items that you've found good for you?
As a person who has used SuperMemo for 16+ years, do you have any tips on using SuperMemo consistently?
As I've mentioned, I'm a beginner to SuperMemo so as a person who has used it for 16 years, how would you recommend learning SuperMemo? I'm currently using the ABC on Supermemo Help and plan to use the links on that page.
For me, what has helped a lot has been just getting your hands dirty and remembering stuff that "sparks joy". I'll make a longer post about this, but one thing that helped a lot was realizing that I had a really hard time remembering movies after a couple of years passed. When I realized that movies that I could hardly remember anything about movies that I had PAID MONEY to see IN A THEATER MULTIPLE TIMES, I decided to start memorizing key plot points of movies I liked. My initial cards were a little rough and poorly made, but it helped me to hone my skills at representing a different kind of knowledge, and I had fun along the way. I improved in my skills, and now I can apply it to more useful information than movie trivia about "The Prestige". (Bonus points: because I have lots of movie trivia and plot points in SuperMemo, I look forward to it because while I might have to review a Japanese character, but I might also get to review a flashcard about the production of Jaws! That's fun!) Also, I noticed that after I got into this habit, my metaphor skills went WAY UP. Sorry this took so long to respond to, things in life have been busy but I'm finally getting back to answering stuff. I'm going to make a bigger post covering a little bit of the above in more detail, but this is the cliff notes version.
DeleteGlad to have you posting again! Your posts motivated me to make the switch from Anki to SM18.
ReplyDeleteNice! As long as you are sustaining a daily habit of flashcards, you’re heading in the right direction 👍🏻 For many years I experimented with a number of mnemonic systems that I tried to “hold in place” with SuperMemo; in the end many of them did not produce the result I wanted, so I abandoned the system. Even though I could think to myself “wow that was a massive waste of time,” it really wasn’t. It was a stepping stone on the way to an even better solution in the long term. So don’t think of your time in Anki as wasted time, because regardless of which system or program you end up using, you are learning how to think with long term memory in view. In the end the same core skills are necessary for both Anki and SuperMemo, it just seems that SuperMemo is more efficient in long term interval scheduling. (Just want to make sure I’m not helping divide people, just because I’m a shameless SuperMemo guy doesn’t mean that I’m anti-Anki or anti-any-other-SRS, we are all huge nerds 😀)
DeleteWow, Congratulations on having 107,000+ items! I'm a SuperMemo beginner and I'd like to ask you some questions.
ReplyDeleteAs a person with over 100,000 items, do you have any tips on gaining the motivation to make items daily? Also, do you have a particular workflow for adding items that you've found good for you?
As a person who has used SuperMemo for 16+ years, do you have any tips on using SuperMemo consistently?
As I've mentioned, I'm a beginner to SuperMemo so as a person who has used it for 16 years, how would you recommend learning SuperMemo? I'm currently using the ABC on Supermemo Help and plan to use the links on that page.
Thank you for your kind words and your questions 😀
DeleteI'm going to answer your questions in a number of posts, since they all deserve more space than a comment section. But as a quick spoiler alert:
1. How do you use SuperMemo consistently? Eventually a habit becomes so ingrained it hurts worse to NOT do it than it is to do it. SuperMemo became that way for me.
2. How do I add items daily? Often times I don't, but I create a document on my Notes app that contains questions and answers that can easily be slotted into SuperMemo. When I have a free evening I add them while watching TV with my wife or watching a Let’s Play on YouTube.
3. Ideal workflow? For me it started with using incremental reading within SuperMemo to get the hang of taking information and converting them into good Questions and Answers. Over time I got a handle on listening to written material (Via an app that reads stuff to me out loud called Voice Dream) or listen to YouTube videos, and pausing as I come across useful information and making a Question and Answer on the spot in my Notes app. Those cards get added later on. One time while traveling extensively I didn’t add any new flashcards for almost 3 months, but after the trip was over, I had hundreds of flashcards to add from my Notes app. 😅
https://supermemoadventures.blogspot.com/2022/03/how-supermemo-helped-build-momentum-in.html Hopefully this post helps to provide further detail to your question. SuperMemo kind of became a motivation generator for me in other aspects of life, in addition to doing my flashcards.
DeleteI wholeheartedly agree! The time spent in Anki learning to encode and formulate knowledge was not wasted. It a relief to have to do lesser repetitions due to a better algorithm.
ReplyDeleteIncremental Reading also helps make the whole learning process more organic and unforced. Thank you for your kind words.
Yeah, the actual using of the program is a little difficult since you don't have a phone app or any way to synchronize, but the "extras" are so compelling that the shortcomings are very small by comparison.
DeleteI am curious to know if you have ever deleted items. So the 107K is the resulting count, not necesarily the overall count of items that you ever made in SM. I recently shared a video about this. I think I've deleted a couple hundred items out of 56K.
ReplyDelete