I have been using Supermemo daily for almost 20 years, and I have basically stopped trying to sell people on the idea. When I explain it to them, they agree that it is a good idea, but very a few people can truly follow through in the long-term. Yes, SRS is basically a gym membership that most people will stop using after Jan 3, I like that metaphor.
You’re referring to incremental reading, which yes is indeed one of the killer features of SuperMemo. You're basically just reading, but you have at the core of it an SRS (SuperMemo) to store cool ideas in flashcard form and every article (“Topics” is how they are referred to in SuperMemo) will be shown to you at a later date. I like to think of them all on a “conveyor belt” that means everything you put into it will eventually find its way back to you. I love incremental reading but for many years I have struggled to find a way to mimic this OUTSIDE of SuperMemo. The overall peace of mind and level of control I have over the learning process is quite remarkable, and incremental reading is more than just the sum of its parts. I wish there were a standalone app for your phone or iPad for incremental reading, as I would love to use my iPad to do what I do when reading in SuperMemo on my windows laptop.
Dude, nice job! I've been using SuperMemo daily since January 2006! I started using it only for Japanese vocabulary words, but after a few years I tried to branch out and start using it for other stuff. It took a while to really wrap my head around using SRS to learn bigger concepts outside of learning languages. To make a long story short, it all comes down to breaking down any concept or idea into single sentence bites that are added to your flashcard collection. Very often complicated concepts require many flashcards, and (to me) THIS is where learning truly happens. Looking at an idea and saying "what makes this idea work?" and making sure those ideas are covered adequately in your flashcard collection. Now as I listen or read something, I'm constantly asking myself "Is this idea covered in my SuperMemo collection?" And if not, I write down single sentences in my Notes app and add them the next morning after I finish my repetitions. (When do you do your reps? First thing in the morning or throughout the day?) I was annoyed when I was going down this path because there were little to no resources for using SRS to learn complex information (Outside of the SuperMemo web site), so a lot of this I had to learn by trial and error. Let me know if you want to chat, so cool to find others that are dedicated enough to go 10+ years with SRS!
Cool! Yeah, at a certain point I was looking for help in my flashcard routine but realized not many people have used a program like SuperMemo for a few years in a row every single day, and I thought it would be a good idea to write down my experiences and observations.
I have a blog, like the early 2000’s! I’m also working on a book, hopefully I’ll have it done by the end of this year. The blog is called supermemoadventures. I’ve been using SuperMemo for 17 years, every single day. If you have any questions, feel free to ask here.
I’ve been using SuperMemo for Windows every day for 17 years but I’ve started using Anki so I can do some foreign language flashcards on the go (I add them to SuperMemo after the interval gets to more than 1 month). Anki is easy and convenient, SuperMemo is extremely powerful and versatile when it comes to easily adding media like pictures to your cards. I say go with whatever you are most likely to not quit doing. Either choice would be fine, although I’m obviously Team SuperMemo all the way
Whoa, awesome to see a fellow SuperMemo user here! I've been going for 17 years, I absolutely can't imagine life without SuperMemo and I've stopped trying to sell my friends on it. Have you tried integrating Study Wand with SuperMemo at all? I'm always on the lookout for ways to maximize my information intake (Aside from SuperMemo, which already does a nearly perfect job at it).
I’ve been using SuperMemo for almost 17 years every single day, started using it before Anki even came out. Too invested in my SuperMemo flashcard collection to jumó ship. I am 100% satisfied with SuperMemo 18’s algorithm, I’ve upgraded every single version since this is kind of my thing now. I’m a guy that does flashcards every day and can almost perfectly memorize everything I put in it.
Yes, exactly! I frequently notice during my day-to-day life, I will ask myself simple questions like “what is the state department?” and then I Google the question, read the answer, and create a question and answer pair in as simple language as possible and then store that in my notes app. I no longer feel embarrassed, but I’m actually excited to find these kinds of gaps in my knowledge. I also feel way less pressure to act like I understand something that I don’t out of fear of looking stupid. It has been such an overall net positive for my brain.
Hey, you sound like me! I’ve been using SuperMemo daily for more than a decade, and I’ve noticed something similar. Processing information and thinking in terms of “how do I make a flashcard that covers this fact?” has been helpful at both making flashcards but also just general understanding stuff. Taking notes in my Notes app in the form of questions and answers has been very useful.
As far as productivity goes, I use a text document to track when I begin a new task and I don’t “start” the next task until I finish the previous one. Doing this has made me really conscious of finishing something before I start something else. As far as studying goes, I use SuperMemo to keep track of useful bits of knowledge and my Notes app on my iPhone to keep track of what goes into SuperMemo. I use Things 3 on my iPhone to keep track of recurring To Dos and I work every day to get that list to zero. I have made sure that my Things 3 to do list gets to zero by the end of the day, and I’ve been doing that for the last 554 days.
Yo, I've been using SuperMemo for 16 years every single day (Did my cards this morning :), and you're spot on! I would love to chit chat about SM sometime, I've not met many people that use SRS for so long! Send me an e-mail at thesupermemoguy (at) gmail (dot) com
I guess I’m the extreme case then; I’ve been using SuperMemo for 16 years, every single day; originally it was to memorize foreign language vocabulary words, but has since expanded to everything I want to know. Left unchecked you’re right, you can easily become obsessed with memorizing junk knowledge and becoming like the comic book guy from the Simpson’s. But over time it has helped me learn how to “compact” complicated ideas into simple statements and more easily internalize new ideas. Since I’ve been using SuperMemo to remember concepts, metaphors and illustrations kind of just “appear” in my brain. I don’t fully understand why, I think it’s like lightning striking a place with lots of metal; you can’t force it to happen, but you can make the conditions conducive to “lightning strikes” of inspiration.
Spaced repetition all the way, my man. I’ve been using a flashcard program called SuperMemo for more than 15 years to remember cool stuff, and now I have a destination for anything noteworthy I find while reading or listening to podcasts.
Nope, doing reviews where topics are totally randomized (Called stochastic review) has been easier for me in the long run because I don’t have to categorize things, I just shovel them into SuperMemo and review them when their time comes. One skill you acquire while doing this is you learn how to quickly establish context for an idea since you can’t rely on contextual groupings when you’re doing your reviews. This has helped me learn to summarize information quicker because long term you will be asking yourself “If I don’t see this flashcard for three years, does this question establish enough contextual information that I can answer it?” Most flashcards are only one or two sentences long, since reading a paragraph to review a single card is really monotonous. As far as what info do I remember with it, it started out purely for language stuff, then I started using it for job info, then started using it for more “high class” information like history or science, but also experimented with idioms in foreign languages and then jokes in my mother tongue (English), which has been a lot of fun. I’m pretty convinced that if someone really committed to it, you could learn to be a really good comedian or freestyle rapper by using spaced repetition.
As far as daily life goes, I do my reps in the morning and don’t really use SuperMemo much throughout the day. I have a text file in the Notes app on my phone where I write stuff that I want to remember and then I add those flashcards when I’m watching YouTube or a TV show with my wife. Fun evening activity to do. I have 110,000 flashcards so far.
I’ve been using SuperMemo for 16 years, do my cards every day (just finished today’s cards about 20 mins ago). Super useful for obvious stuff like languages, but also very useful for more subtle stuff you want to keep in your brain; you basically have a “remember forever” button in your life, which you can use for useful information you encounter online, facts about loved ones, jokes, scientific concepts, cognitive biases you are prone to, basically a little bit of everything. Spaced repetition is a very effective tool, but it’s overall usefulness depends on the self discipline and willingness of the user to recognize their own memory related shortcomings. You can live an entire life without spaced repetition and be just fine, but once it clicked in my head how effective spaced repetition was, I couldn’t not be obsessed with it. The feeling of being able to know what you know, and to rely on that knowledge being there, it feels like when Thor reaches out his hand and Mjölnir just flies into it with no effort on Thor’s part. It feels so great!
Hello! I’ve been a heavy user of SuperMemo for almost 16 years (January 23 is my SuperMemo anniversary!). Initially I thought SuperMemo was going to “think for me,” but the more I used it, I realized that it’s actually just augmenting my memory, enhancing it like a fancy robot arm would help a victim of a lost limb (Think Metal Gear Solid 5).
I’ve been using SuperMemo for almost 16 years, every single day. I can’t think of a better way to guarantee that I will retain stuff outside of using some kind of algorithm to tell me when to refresh desired information. I think of it more as “computer augmented memory” rather than “I’m letting the computer think for me.” I use it in the morning to review my cards but other than that I have little interaction with it (until I add more cards, which happens during periods of down time)