Many rationalists appear to be interested in weightlifting. I certainly have enjoyed having a gym habit. I have a recommendation for those who do:
Try studying Anki cards while resting between weightlifting sets.
The upside is high. Building the habit of studying Anki cards is hard, and if doing it at the gym causes it to stick, you can now remember things by choice not chance.
And the cost is pretty low. I rest for 90 seconds between sets, and do about 20 sets when I go to the gym. Assuming I get a minute in once the overheads are accounted for, that gives me 20 minutes of studying. I go through about 4 cards per minute, so I could do 80 cards per visit to the gym. In practice I spend only ~5 minutes studying per visit, because I don’t have that many cards.
I’m not too tired to concentrate. In fact, the adrenaline high makes me happy to have something mentally active to do. Probably because of this, it doesn’t at all decrease my desire to go to the gym.
I find I can add simple cards to my Anki deck at the gym, although the mobile app does make it slow.
Give it a try! It’s cheap to experiment and the value of a positive result is high.
I tried this today and it went well. Got through ~15 cards in only a few sets. It did cause me to take longer rests between sets (I can’t seem to consistently use a timer) but I’m not that worried about long rests anyway.
Entering cards seems harder for me though. Most of my cards include some sort of LaTex formatting, which I don’t think the Android app supports applying.
I’m really glad to have this comment! It seems much more valuable to know that something passes a first attempt by a second party than to just hear a recommendation from one person’s experience.
Why don’t you just use MathJax? Maybe this wasn’t the case when you wrote this comment, but there should be a button that just applies the formatting, and Ankidroid can render it.
Do Anki while Weightlifting
Many rationalists appear to be interested in weightlifting. I certainly have enjoyed having a gym habit. I have a recommendation for those who do:
Try studying Anki cards while resting between weightlifting sets.
The upside is high. Building the habit of studying Anki cards is hard, and if doing it at the gym causes it to stick, you can now remember things by choice not chance.
And the cost is pretty low. I rest for 90 seconds between sets, and do about 20 sets when I go to the gym. Assuming I get a minute in once the overheads are accounted for, that gives me 20 minutes of studying. I go through about 4 cards per minute, so I could do 80 cards per visit to the gym. In practice I spend only ~5 minutes studying per visit, because I don’t have that many cards.
I’m not too tired to concentrate. In fact, the adrenaline high makes me happy to have something mentally active to do. Probably because of this, it doesn’t at all decrease my desire to go to the gym.
I find I can add simple cards to my Anki deck at the gym, although the mobile app does make it slow.
Give it a try! It’s cheap to experiment and the value of a positive result is high.
I tried this today and it went well. Got through ~15 cards in only a few sets. It did cause me to take longer rests between sets (I can’t seem to consistently use a timer) but I’m not that worried about long rests anyway.
Entering cards seems harder for me though. Most of my cards include some sort of LaTex formatting, which I don’t think the Android app supports applying.
I’m really glad to have this comment! It seems much more valuable to know that something passes a first attempt by a second party than to just hear a recommendation from one person’s experience.
Why don’t you just use MathJax? Maybe this wasn’t the case when you wrote this comment, but there should be a button that just applies the formatting, and Ankidroid can render it.
I now use MathJax!