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Comment by laurieg | Hacker News Reader

Spaced repetition is a wonderful tool. I came across it when I started learning languages and have over 5000 cards in my largest Anki deck for words and phrases.

A lot of thought is put into how to use a learners time most effectively. The algorithm designers seem to want to optimize their software so that a student only sees a card they are likely to be on the verge of forgetting. Because of this, uses often fail when they look at a flashcard.

Designing like this seems to ignore spaced repetitions most common failure mode: giving up. I think there is something especially demoralizing about getting questions wrong or being shown you are forgetting something all the time. I think it might even be solved by making the software less efficient but more 'friendly'. For example, giving a student an easier question that they are unlikely to have forgotten to soften the blow of a glut of difficult questions.

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I remember earlier versions of Anki that implemented the algorithm so literally that it would tell you that you couldn't learn new cards until you had reviewed the 500 cards in your backlog, a seemingly insurmountable task that would just cause you to procrastinate and get a bigger backlog. They revised that to make it more motivating, fortunately, partially by capping the amount of backlog it would present to you on any given day.

I'm using WaniKani for Japanese now -- it's not nearly as portable as Anki but it's the first integrated solution I've seen for Japanese, teaching kanji by a Heisig-like method alongside vocabulary that uses the kanji.

I used to use an Anki deck for Heisig's Remember the Kanji, but I found it entirely unmotivating to spend time every day learning symbols out of context. Imagine an English class about learning the alphabet song, except the song just keeps going, and by the time you're learning the tenth verse of the alphabet you're still not spelling any words. That's Heisig. It's a clever system of mnemonics but it's not a complete solution.

Now WaniKani has the opposite problem with motivation -- it ramps up far too slowly. It doesn't let you study ahead. On your first day using the system, you can only study something like 20 cards, and you only get more when you wait out the spaced repetition and prove you've mastered those, even though they are extremely simple radicals and numbers that you probably know already if you are interested enough in learning Japanese to seek out WaniKani. This must be terrible for on-boarding, but I'm putting up with it because it's still the most effective Japanese study method I've seen.

Agreed. It doesn't matter how efficient the algorithm is if people get bored and stop using it. At Polly Lingual (https://pollylingu.al) we tried to tune our space-repitition flashcards for this. We aimed for small lessons that move more quickly, with optional follow up for difficult items. For casual learners this doesn't deter them, and for advanced students, they can still go back and see where they need improvement or just simply do the lessons again.

Fascinating, how come I never heard of your site? Is it fairly young? It looks interesting and a big selection of languages (I'm looking at Arabic).

But i just wanted to comment to mention that i like the pricing model - it seems small enough to be painless and still like a real price. Will definitely try it out.

Thanks, it's been around in various forms for a few years, recently moved from "Salaam Arabic" https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/learn-arabic-salaam/id646808... to a the unified Polly Lingual. It's been a lifestyle company and sort of priced that way. The goal has always been to not be annoying, but maybe that's been bad for business.

My main problem with spaced repetition programs like Anki is getting the motivation to stick with them long-term. This also dovetails in with my problems with procrastination. I've never seen a good solution. Most of the proposed solutions boil down to "just do it". It doesn't work for me.

> My main problem with spaced repetition programs like Anki is getting the motivation to stick with them long-term. This also dovetails in with my problems with procrastination. I've never seen a good solution. Most of the proposed solutions boil down to "just do it". It doesn't work for me.

If it's just one or at most three such'daily'things you want to do i had great success with simple "don't break the chain" kind of apps - every day you succeed in doing your task you check the box and it's marked on a calendar. There really is a drive not to ruin this beautiful chain, and I've found myself following through for months at a time - but then when you do fail once and the chain is broken the motivation really takes a slump as well.

Checking in with a friend or your partner can also help. Get some mild social accountability going and you might find yourself quite driven to follow through.

"If it's just one or at most three such'daily'things you want to do i had great success with simple "don't break the chain" kind of apps - every day you succeed in doing your task you check the box and it's marked on a calendar. There really is a drive not to ruin this beautiful chain, and I've found myself following through for months at a time - but then when you do fail once and the chain is broken the motivation really takes a slump as well."

This reminds me of the big physical yearly calendar I put on my apartment's door. It's right there in front of my face every time I go out the door. When I first got it, I crossed out all of the days that had passed for the year, and wrote in what was to come on important days of the year. Each day I would look to see what was on the calendar, and cross out yesterday's day. I had this nice long chain of crossed out boxes and written in appointments.

That worked for a while, but eventually, I stopped. Now it's been months and the calendar hangs there, and I don't touch it. I can't fail to see it all the time, every day I leave home, but I've just phased it out, I ignore it, and don't even notice it 99% of the time. Sometimes I do notice it or remember that it's there, and that I should really be crossing out those days, but I don't actually do anything.

That's the thing about procrastination. It's one thing to know what you should be doing, and quite another thing to do it. Tricks like "don't break the chain" can only get you so far.

I feel a bit the same. What's your goal of learning with Anki?

Part of my other comment here 'then what?' also links to someone else's comment about Anki - it wouldn't let you skip 500 words of backlog until you'd reviewed them. And the FAQ used to say something like: "Sorry, but you skipped some time and you are now at risk of forgetting those 500 words. You need to review them, because otherwise what's the point in any of this?".

I'm starting to wonder if people ever really 'learn' things, and if it's more a case of 'use it or lose it' happening every moment. When you're not using it, it starts to fade - whatever it is. Native language included, all skills included. And the consequence of that is that all learning has to include some notion of using it in future, not just once but regularly - frequently, even.

If your goal is in any way "because I should" or "because I want to be a better person" or "because I want to know more", I'm not surprised it gives you little motivation. If your goal instead includes "I want to do X with the language or skill, on a regular basis":

- I want to study Language because I travel to Langland every two weeks for work, and desperately want to be able to talk to people without a translator: motivating.

- I want to study Language because I saw a holiday to Langland on offer and maybe I'll go there next year, and I don't really have anything else to do: not motivating.

then the strength of motivation depends[1] on the strength of desire you have to do a thing, combined with the amount of doing that thing you want to have in your future life. Most things we choose to learn about, we have no good plan to weave them into regular life, and so not a long term strong desire to learn about them, and so not that much motivation to stick past the novelty stage.

[1] speculative.

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