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Comment by andai | Hacker News Reader

I had the opposite experience. If something's easy to remember, I don't need Anki. If something's hard to remember (I really struggle with birthdays, for example), even Anki doesn't help! The cards all end up as "leech" and Anki stops showing them to me. (I found this behaviour amusing, since the whole point of using Anki is to help me learn things that are difficult to remember!)

They say if a card is ending up as a leech, it's a "problem" card and you should somehow improve it. But I'm not sure how to improve this: Side A: name. Side B: birthday. (Cards are also shown reversed.)

Arguably I could add some kind of mnemonics, or learn the Mnemonic Major System for remembering numbers. (On that note, does anyone have specific advice for remembering birthdays? The Dutch among you will say "hang a birthday calendar in your toilet", which was probably the correct solution all along...)

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Give yourself more opportunities to latch onto the card.

Instead of Name -> Birthday, try "X's birthday is in {month}", or "Y's birthday is the {N}th of January" or "Z's birthday is just before {some notable date, like Christmas}" or "A's birthday is just after {B ... someone whos birthday you remember}". e.g. I remember my best friend's wife's birthday because it occurs shortly after mine. I remember a girl who I used to live across from 25 years ago because her birthday was just before mine.

This way, you have multiple different ways of relating to the information. If the related key date is coming up, you can think "oh...Z's birthday is around now"...which should be enough for you to functionally act on it.

Try to avoid the mindset of single cards. If you _really_ want the information, break it down in different ways.

Wrestling with the information in this way is a good way to find patterns and relations to it in the first place (put the information IN your brain well)...then use spaced repetition to practice getting the information OUT of your brain well.

> If something's easy to remember, I don't need Anki.

That probably depends on what and how much you are trying to memorize with Anki. It is easy to learn a few words in a foreign language, but try to learn three to five new words per day for a year straight and suddenly you realize how far spaced repetition can bring you.

For leeches, what helps is to create more cards with the same concept (and do not suspend the leech, you are right that is not a good idea). If I struggle learning a word, I create more sentences using that word, or connect it with synonyms and antonyms. For birthdays, maybe try to add some memories related to that birthday: some particular gift, a happy moment during that day, the weather or location where you celebrated... Just see what sticks :)

Why would you need to learn birthdays (except maybe closest family)? It's maybe the canonical thing to put into a calendar.

"Because I want to" is obviously fine, but it still reminds me of the infamous "capitals of the world" flashcards that spaced repetition practitioners warn against.

It wasn't until I discovered Anki a few years ago that I finally was able to remember my parents' and sisters' birthdays (despite calendar reminders every year).

Why remember something that can be looked up? Latency; it's super useful to have things appear in your brain so you can immediately do something useful with them instead of slowing down and looking something up and potentially losing context.

So, Anki did help me learn a few of them, while a few would just never stick for some reason. Amusingly, the few birthdays I did learn didn't really help me because even though I knew the birthdays, they wouldn't come to mind until days or weeks after the birthday passed!

So what I'd actually need is "what are all the birthdays that occur this month", and then have a ritual habit installed that at the first day of the month I would spend a few minutes pondering this list in my mind.

(Again, the birthday wall calendar would probably work better here...)

Why are spaced repetition "practitioners" warning against that?

I have a "Roman Emperors" Anki deck. It serves absolutely no purpose except making me feel good about it, but it works well (except maybe for the final few emperors, those tend to be leeches).

If you're truly interested in Roman Emperors, that's fine, of course. The warning is more about "I just started spaced repetition, I need cards quick, so let's do capitals, US states, and other random trivia".

I admit birthdays of acquaintances don't quite fit under "random trivia", but I'll still maintain that learning random birthdays seems useless, when the calendar works so well.

Well yes, I would agree that memorising facts that you're not interested in is probably not a very good use of your time and mental energy.

For me specifically the motivation was that my mother, who is naturally very good with dates and birthdays, would keep telling me "It's your {uncle, grandma, cousin}'s birthday, don't forget!" and I would think to myself, "what kind of bad person am I, that I don't even know my own family's birthdays?"

Similarly, I struggle with understanding/remembering the structure of my family tree, at least for the family members that I never met (I am often told stories about ancestors, and am shamed for my inability/unwillingness to naturally and automatically memorize them). So I broke the family tree up into individual relations and made Anki cards of them.

That worked a little better than the birthdays, but still a struggle, because it is "meaningless information" as far as my own brain is concerned. I might consciously think it's important to have knowledge of your ancestry, but my neurology apparently disagrees... Alas!

Don't bother. Do you want your distant relatives to toil away trying to remember where you fit in the family tree? Life is too short for that. Forgive yourself and move on.

I'm bad at it too and my wife is not, so she can figure out my own family tree better than I can; it makes for good party banter.

>> (I found this behaviour amusing, since the whole point of using Anki is to help me learn things that are difficult to remember!)

> Eliminating 10% of the most difficult items in a generic material may produce an increase in the speed of learning of up to 300%.

https://super-memory.com/articles/theory.htm

A calendar in your toilet? Go digital and use your phone's built-in calendar.

The difference here is important. I see the birthday calendar (well, my Dutch housemate's one) every time I sit down on the toilet. As for non-wall calendars (both digital and physical), stuff goes into them but it never comes out!

(Though the digital one does become useful due to the automatic reminders.)

Learn the month and day separately?

I did consider this, especially since the few that I was able to memorize didn't help me remember the birthday on time. So perhaps a more useful association would be:

[month] -> [list of important birthdays]

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