We forget quickly, and on a predictable curve: Hermann Ebbinghaus first measured it in the 1880s. Each time we recall something just as it begins to fade, though, the memory lasts longer. Spaced repetition puts that to work. You review material at growing intervals, a day, then a few days, then weeks, then months, so that each review comes just before you would forget. Two things make it effective. First, the reviews are *tests*: you try to recall the answer before you see it, and recalling teaches more than rereading. Second, the spacing does the work that cramming can’t. A few minutes a day keeps hundreds of facts fresh for years. Doing this by hand would mean tracking an interval for every card. An app like [[Anki|Anki]] does the tracking for you: you rate how well you remembered each card, and it schedules the next review. ## Beyond flashcards Spaced repetition isn’t only for flashcards. Sönke Ahrens notes that we learn not only by connecting new material to what we already know, but also “when we try to retrieve it at different times (spacing) in different contexts (variation)” (Ahrens 2022: 117). A slip box of linked notes, he argues, makes us do exactly that “just by using it” (118). My vault works the same way. Each daily note links to a few random notes from my vault. When one catches my attention, I reread it and revise it, and I usually come away understanding the idea better than when I first wrote it. Tiago Forte’s rule of thumb is that every time you touch a note, you should “leave it better than you found it” (Forte 2022: 139–40). It’s spaced repetition without a schedule: chance does the spacing, and rewriting does the recall. (More in [[how I use Obsidian|How I use Obsidian]].) ## How I use it Anki is part of my daily routine, usually first thing in the morning. I first started using it in the summer of 2023 to prepare for my doctoral Music History Entrance Exam. I’ve also been using it for English vocabulary and German for the past two years or so. ### German I’m learning German for reading knowledge, starting over as an absolute beginner. My cards follow a few rules: - **Full sentences, never isolated words.** I learn words better in context. Nouns appear with their articles. - **Typed answers.** I type the whole sentence, which forces exact recall, and grade myself. - **Both directions, in separate decks.** One deck goes from German to English, the other from English to German, and I study them one at a time, so I never switch keyboards mid-session. - **Sentences from real books.** The cards come from textbooks I already own, a unit at a time, with readings and exercises alongside. ### Music history For my doctoral exams in music history, first the entrance exam and now my comprehensive exams, I made flashcards for an entire survey textbook, *A History of Western Music* (Burkholder, Grout, and Palisca 2019). ## Where to start - **Make your own cards.** Writing a card is itself a review; shared decks skip that step. - **Keep each card small:** one fact or one sentence per card. - **Add few new cards, and never skip reviews.** Missed days pile up; a small daily habit doesn’t. ## References Ahrens, Sönke. 2022. *How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking*. 2nd ed. Hamburg: Sönke Ahrens. Burkholder, J. Peter, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude V. Palisca. 2019. *A History of Western Music*. 10th ed. New York: W. W. Norton. Forte, Tiago. 2022. *Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential*. New York: Atria Books.