00:00:00
Hey, what is going on, guys ? So I
think we can all agree that studying takes far, far too much time so
what I wanna do in this video show you guys how can remember more of
what you learn, even if you're spending fewer actual hours studying,
and the way to do that is by spacing out that study time. This is a
technique called spaced repetition and to do it you add progressively
longer and longer time intervals in between each of your study
sessions. So in this video I wanna show you exactly how you can do
that, both with your paper flash cards and with apps both for
smartphones and computers.
00:00:30
But first I wanted to get into why this
technique is so powerful and also talk to you a little bit about the
history behind it and how it relates to our memories in general.
Spaced repetition leverages a memory phenomenon known as the spacing
effect, which describes how our brains make better connections and
overall remember things more effectively when space out our learning
over time. How's how Pierce J. Howard, the author of my least
favorite book to haul into coffee shops, puts it: “Work involving
higher mental functions, such as analysis and synthesis, needs to be
spaced out in order to allow new neural connection to solidify.
00:01:00
New learning drives out old learning
when insufficient time intervenes. And we've actually known about
this effect for quite long time. Back in the late 1800s a
psychologist named Hermann Ebbinghaus basically launched the field
of memmory science itself by embarking upon an intense study where he
made himself memorize long, long lists of nonsense syllables. And
through that research he eventually came to develop what's called The
Forgeting Curve, which describes how memories decay over time. But
what he also learned was that by spacing out his efforts to memorize
these lists, he could put in less actual study time to get them
memorized perfectly.
00:01:32
For example, for one list of 12
syllables he found out it took him 68 repetitions on one day and then
seven repetitions the next day to memorize it perfectly, but by
spacing out his studying over the course of three days he found he
could achieve the same level of perfection in only 38 repetitions.
Over the past 130 years since published his findings, lots of other
studies hav been able to replicate this same positive results, which
leads us to the question, “Why does the spacing effect work ?”
Well to out in simple terms, it turns
out that one of the most important parts of learning process is
actually forgetting.
00:02:00
Now what forgetting truly is is a
subject for another video that Ill publish in the future, but the
most important thing to note here is that the more we've forgotten
something, that is the harder we have to work to retrieve it since we
last learned it or studied it, the greater the increase in learning
will be. To make this a bit more clear, here's how the author
Benedict Carey, who wrote the book “How We Learn,” explains it:
“Some amount of breakdown must accour” for us to strengthen
learning when we revisit the material. Without a little forgetting,
you get no benefit from further study. It is what allows learning to
build, like an excercised muscle.”
00:02:32
And that's the main reason why Carey
calls spaced repetition one of the most powerful methods for
remembering what you've learned in his book. And I would add to that
the fact that you can do this with basically any other learning
technique. It's entirely complemantary because it's all about just
modifying the time periods in which you study. You can do anything
within those time periods, you're just using time periods as
intelligently as possible. With that being said, now I wanna get into
how you can put spaced repetition into action and implement it into
you own study systems. And we're gonna tlak about apps and computer
programs that can use in a minute here but first I want to talk about
a system that you can use with your paper flash cards, which is
called the Leitner System, and here's is how it works.
00:03:07
The first step is to decide on the
number of boxes that you're gonna use to hold the cards in your
system. Now I don't actually own little boxes so I've just
substituted rubber bands and sticky notes that say “Box,” but
that actually works just as well and actually makes the system more
portable, so that's pretty cool and from there each individual box is
going to represent a different study time interval. So Box 1 might be
studying every day, Box 2 might be every other day and so on.
00:03:30
And when you're studying the cards in
the boxes everytime you get a card right it's gonna graduate to the
next box, so you're gonna see it less and less often. But if you get
a card wrong, it's gonna go all the way to box number 1, no matter
where it was. And by using this system you get two main benefits.
Number one, you're maximizing your learning through the space effect,
but number two you're also studying more efficiently because you're
spending more time on the cards that need the most attention and less
time on ones you know really well rather than studying every single
card equally. Now this paper system works really well for both of
those goals but if you wanna take advantage of more advanced
schedulling algorithms and other features, you're gonna need to find
yourself a space repetition app and there are a lot of contenders in
this area but I wanna focus first on what is probably the most
popular one right now and that is called Anki.
00:04:15
Anki has a huge community, it's
insanely customizable, best of all, it has apps for almost every
platform out there and almost all of then are free with the exception
ot the iPhone app, which oddly costs a whopping $25. Now I think the
price is that high because it's their way of basically letting people
support the app since it's free everywhere else but if you're on an
iPhone and you don't wanna pay that much, fear not because Anki also
has a companion app called AnkiWeb, which is accessible from mobile
Safari. So you can use that free if you want. Now with Anki, creating
cards is really, really easy and I really like the fact that you can
add basically any kind of media you want to your cards, including
picture, which is awesome because adding picture to your flash cards
can really help increase retention. However, the killer feature of
Anki is the ability to rate cards based on difficulty when you're
studying them.
00:05:00
So essentially, when you turn a card
over, you can tell the program how hard it was for you to dredge the
answer up from the depths of your memory and it will use that data to
decide how long it's gonna be before you see that card again. And
that's really the main strength of space repetition apps versus a
paper system.
00:05:15
Each individual card can be tracked,
can have a difficulty rating, and can be adjusted in the algorithm so
you're getting the most benefit of the spacing effect. Anki is
definitely not the only space repetition app out there, though, so if
you're looking for alternatives, I've got a few things in mind for
you to take a look at, number one being an app called TinyCards,
which I showed off in my previous video on how to make better flash
cards.
00:05:35
Now TinyCards is only for the iPhone,
unfortunately, but there should be an Android version coming soon,
and honestly, when compared to Anki I think it's a lot more simple, a
lot prettier, and the process of making cards is more fun and faster
because they have an excellent system for adding images to your
cards. Aside from TinyCards there are also apps like Flashcards
Deluxe, Memrise, SuperMemo, Mnemosyne, Eidetic, Quizlet and probably
a bunch of others that I don't even know about right now but I'm sure
you will let me know about down in comments.
00:06:00
So before I wrap this video up I have a
couple more things I wanna mention, number one being the script I
wrote for this video is actually about half the length of the blog
post I wrote so if you want a lot more detail, especially pertaining
to the memory bits and how the spacing effect works, you can click
the blog post link in the description below or on the card on the
screen right now and read to your heart’s content. Also, and I have
been really excited to announce this for quite a long time now,
there’s now ……...
