One way to look at memory systems' efficiency is marginal cost: I can choose to "pay" 5m over my lifetime to memorize the answer to a question.
I find it generative to flip that around. Say I saturated 10 minutes of review daily—what would that casual practice unlock? (thread)
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This framing maps better onto my lived experience. I review during interstitial dead time I'd probably misuse. It doesn't "cost" 10 minutes: it's free, so long as it stays in that timebox.
Empirically, I find my reviews stay <10 minutes so long as I cap new questions to 40/day.
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If I could add 40 questions a day, that would mean I could add 14,600 questions a year, at the cost of 10 minutes a day!
The first chapter of Quantum Country is 112 questions, so that amount to something like memorizing the material from 130 textbook chapters!
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But I don't add 40 questions a day! Question-writing, not reviewing, is the real bottleneck for my practice.
It's awfully difficult to write good questions, and taxing even if you're skilled at it. I find it also requires a significant context switch.
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Of course, lots of people solve this by downloading others' questions, but this seems to rarely work outside basic language learning. Instead, it usually leads to people dropping the practice. More on why:
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Enter: the mnemonic medium. By interleaving expert-authored prompts with prose narrative, authors embed those prompts in structure with meaning. notes.andymatuschak.org/z5YjgWTaYfhWLr
Authors supply the prompts, lightening readers' burden.
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Replying to
Alas, I don't know enough people who both write and regularly share these to know. I hope that'll change.
Dumb question. Whats SRS? I tried searching your blog but couldnt find a search function. And google didnt help. Loved the thread. Read it twice. Slowly. Now I will try summarizing it in my notes...maybe squeeze in some questions prompts.