Diego, I am enjoying reading http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html Thanks for sharing. The sentences from the first half of the article that jumped out in direct relation to tw5:
One benefit of using Anki in this way is that you begin to habitually break > things down into atomic questions. This sharply crystallizes the distinct > things you've learned. Personally, I find that crystallization satisfying, > for reasons I (ironically) find difficult to articulate. But one real > benefit is that later* I often find those atomic ideas can be put > together in ways I didn't initially anticipate*. And that's well worth > the trouble. Anki allows you to organize cards into decks and subdecks. *Some people use > this to create a complicated organizational structure.* I used to do > this, but I've gradually merged my decks and subdecks into one big deck. *The > world isn't divided up into neatly separated components, *and I believe > it's good to collide very different types of questions. > The Anki site has many shared decks, but I've found only a little use for > them. The most important reason is that making Anki cards is an act of > understanding in itself. *That is, figuring out good questions to ask, > and good answers, is part of what it means to understand a new subject > well.* To use someone else's cards is to forgo much of that > understanding. > > Indeed, I believe the act of constructing the cards actually helps with > memory. Memory researchers have repeatedly found that the more elaborately > you encode a memory, the stronger the memory will be. *By elaborative > encoding, they mean essentially the richness of the associations you form.* > *The act of constructing* an Anki card *is itself nearly always a form of > elaborative encoding.* It *forces you to think through alternate forms of > the question, to consider the best possible answers*, and so on. I > believe this is true for even the most elementary cards. And it certainly > becomes true if you construct more complex cards, cards relating the basic > fact to be remembered to other ideas ( ... ), gradually building up a web > of richly interrelated ideas. > *Why not use more* of Anki's *features?* Part of the reason is that I get *an > enormous benefit from just the core features.* Furthermore, learning to > use this tiny set of features well has required a lot of work. A basketball > and hoop are simple pieces of equipment, but you can spend a lifetime > learning to use them well. Similarly, basic Anki practice can be developed > enormously. And so *I've concentrated on learning to use those basic > features well.* > > > I know many people who try Anki out, and then go down a rabbit hole > learning as many features as possible so they can use it “efficiently”. > Usually, they're chasing 1% improvements. Often, those people ultimately > give up Anki as “too difficult”, which is often a synonym for “I got > nervous I wasn't using it perfectly”. This is a pity. > > > As discussed earlier, Anki offers something like a 20-fold improvement > over (say) ordinary flashcards. And so they're giving up a 2,000% > improvement because they were worried they were missing a few final 5%, 1% > and (in many cases) 0.1% improvements. This kind of rabbit hole seems to be > especially attractive to programmers. > > > For this reason, when someone is getting started I advise not using any > advanced features, and not installing any plugins. Don't, in short, come > down with a bad case of programmer's efficiency disease. Learn how to use > Anki for basic question and answer, and concentrate on exploring new > patterns within that paradigm. That'll serve you far better than any number > of hours spent fiddling around with the features. Then, if you build a > regular habit of high-quality Anki use, you can experiment with more > advanced features. > Makes me contemplate making "Question/Answer" tiddlers that connect to the information I already have in my TW! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/7c58ea0f-87f0-4484-9a42-4e748dcf9a8f%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
