🎉 New essay: andymatuschak.org/prompts
This essay catalogues techniques and mental models for writing good spaced repetition prompts—not just to remember stuff but as a method for creating understanding.
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I've been working with authors to extend the mnemonic medium beyond Quantum Country, and prompt-writing has been a consistent challenge—even for experienced authors. So I wrote this guide to distill what I've learned through my own practice and my work with .
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It's a mnemonic essay, exemplifying its own advice by weaving prompts about the content into the text.
But it's very different from Quantum Country. These are fuzzy heuristics, not laws of nature. How does the medium support reading non-technical material? This is an experiment.
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This is also the first large use of , the platform I've been developing to explore questions around the mnemonic medium, timeful texts, programmable attention, etc.
Interested in writing something with mechanics along these lines? DM me!
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I developed the material in this essay through many workshops with authors and my patrons (patreon.com/quantumcountry). My hearty thanks to the participants!
Thanks also to , , , , and for helpful discussion and comments.🙇♂️
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LRT and re my previous tweet: a timely example of what is working on, both an application of the in-development system and a primer of how to write for it
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"Unfortunately, most spaced repetition interfaces treat each prompt as a sovereign unit, which makes this kind of high-level revision difficult." Love this, it's what Traverse tries to address by organizing flashcards hierarchically as well as allowing (back)linking between them
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Is there a way to subscribe to your writing via RSS? When I put in your site it brings up Square Signals blog posts from three years ago, and I’d love to keep up with the great stuff you’re putting out there.
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Ah, thanks for that kind question. I’ll do it at some point! In the meantime, you can subscribe via mailing list here: tinyletter.com/andymatuschak/
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