Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

Spaced repetition has been all the rage for 20 years now.

Dozens of apps, thousands of lectures, and it turns out its not really a silver bullet.

There's nothing really wrong with it, it's just that people tend to fall off the same way they do on any other education pattern.

A couple years ago I was thinking "If Google and Apple really cared about kids they would make a spaced repetition unlock system", where by you have to make note cards every week and then have to answer correctly to get into your phone. (obviously requires some bypass system, other rules, etc)

You could probably jury rig it with a popup that comes up after you unlock, but people would never install it anyway.

Spaced repetition is time-optimised, but it isn't self-discipline optimised, nor motivation-optimised. If you're limited by time, it's very efficient, but it drains motivation. If you're anywhere close to being limited by motivation (or, failing that, self-discipline), it just causes burnout and failure.

I credit Anki to my success at GCSEs and A Levels despite having a head injury, and I also credit it to me burning out so hard I took a gap year!

And I'm enjoying the gap year, but Anki made it a near necessity.

I don't understand, wouldn't it be worse for motivation to take longer to achieve the same results?

What's worse for motivation than taking longer?

Boredom?

Feeling like what you're doing is low-quality or superficial?

Doing something artificial for purely external reasons like grades or exams?

Can't speak for anyone else, but for me I would take slower progress over any of these... which makes spaced repetition a hard sell.

> What's worse for motivation than taking longer?

Many things. I think HN is a bit of a bubble here, but you'll find a lot of people prefer something enjoyable but slower to something efficient and faster, even if they won't admit it.

See the popularity of Duolingo vs Anki as an example! Or Quizlet vs Anki. Or the scores of students who revise by half-watching dopamine-ified youtube videos rather than doing past papers and flashcards. If you ask people, they'll often say they care for efficiency, but their revealed preferences say otherwise.

Doing large amounts (hours) of Anki day in day out is truly miserable, particularly when the alternatives can be quite enjoyable. And if you burn out before you achieve your goal, is the "efficiency" really worth it vs going slower but eventually getting there?

Plus, a lot of people want to learn e.g. a language because they enjoy the process as well as the end result. Making the process miserable in order to get to the end result faster isn't always a good tradeoff.

Which is what it's about. It's a tradeoff. I'm a big proponent of flashcards, but I think it's important to recognise that you're trading enjoyment for speed in most cases.