Lessons on a Better Way to Learn

Submission statement:

Submission statements aren't required here, but I like the practice, and I feel like most people just skip to checking the comments anyway.

This (long) essay was inspired by a couple of things. First, I recently created an app that I believe works better than Anki for a lot of use cases. That's a bold statement, so I wanted to back it up by explaining why I created it and how it fits into a learning process.

Second, I recently saw a post on Medium from someone who attempted to learn the med school curriculum just through their Anki decks (which, if you don't know, are incredibly extensive). It didn't work out that well, and they seemed surprised. It made me realize that there are a lot of misconceptions about spaced repetition and its limitations. More broadly, there are a lot of misconceptions about learning in general, which, as a test-prep tutor, is something I deal with every day.

There's a lot I cover in the essay, including why the attempt to learn the med school curriculum through their Anki decks didn't work. Basically, med school covers both content (facts) and processes (skills). Only content can go into Anki, so it's already impossible to learn processes just by Anki.

More importantly, spaced repetition works great for sticking facts in your mind, but you place a tremendous cognitive burden on yourself by just learning facts without a framework. It's like reading a word one letter at a time. Similarly, there's no guarantee that those facts will ever cohere into an understanding, especially if you're coming from zero knowledge about the subject.

That's why even though med students love Anki, they also very strongly recommend textbooks and problem sets to do well on Step 1 (the massive exam they all worry about). In fact, they have an acronym, UFAP, which is their recommended materials list (UWorld, First Aid, Pathoma).

Anyhow, apologies for the length of the essay, but there was a lot I wanted to put in there. I hope you all enjoy!