“Again and again, I’ve undergone the humbling experience of first lamenting how badly something sucks, then only much later having the crucial insight that its not sucking wouldn’t have been a Nash equilibrium.”—Scott Aaronson
Damn, that is a lession I forgot. Does anyone else experience this? Reading an article, agreeing with it being an interesting insight, forgetting it and then rediscovering it in a different context?
This happened to me all the time before I started putting valuable insights into Anki. I find that 1 card per outstanding article or lecture and 1-3 cards per excellent book is about right. (This is the only thing I use Anki for.)
I tried this but went about it wrong, I wrote a whole bunch of cards like I was making comprehensive notes (around the level of detail of the MineZone book notes), and ended up getting frustrated by the chaff of disordered small notes that the system threw back at me. One card per article / book section seems like a good rule of thumb.
Do you have any conventions for turning insights that don’t necessarily go into a neat question/answer format into card halves? Just put the whole thing on the front of the card?
I’ve found that the process of creating the cards is helpful because it forces me to make the book’s major insight explicit. I usually use cloze tests to run through a book’s major points. For example, my card for The Lean Startup is:
“The Lean Startup process for continuous improvement is (1) {{c1::identify the hypothesis to test}}, (2) {{c2::determine metrics with which to evaluate the hypothesis}}, (3) {{c3::build a minimum viable product}}, (4) {{c4::use the product to get data and test the hypothesis}}.”
This isn’t especially helpful if you just remember what the four phrases are, so I use this as a cue to think briefly about each of those concepts.
“The Lean Startup process for continuous improvement is (1) {{c1::identify the hypothesis to test}}, (2) {{c2::determine metrics with which to evaluate the hypothesis}}, (3) {{c3::build a minimum viable product}}, (4) {{c4::use the product to get data and test the hypothesis}}.”
Does this become a single card with four blanks to fill or four cards that have all but one blank visible?
“Again and again, I’ve undergone the humbling experience of first lamenting how badly something sucks, then only much later having the crucial insight that its not sucking wouldn’t have been a Nash equilibrium.”—Scott Aaronson
Damn, that is a lession I forgot. Does anyone else experience this? Reading an article, agreeing with it being an interesting insight, forgetting it and then rediscovering it in a different context?
This happened to me all the time before I started putting valuable insights into Anki. I find that 1 card per outstanding article or lecture and 1-3 cards per excellent book is about right. (This is the only thing I use Anki for.)
I tried this but went about it wrong, I wrote a whole bunch of cards like I was making comprehensive notes (around the level of detail of the MineZone book notes), and ended up getting frustrated by the chaff of disordered small notes that the system threw back at me. One card per article / book section seems like a good rule of thumb.
Do you have any conventions for turning insights that don’t necessarily go into a neat question/answer format into card halves? Just put the whole thing on the front of the card?
I’ve found that the process of creating the cards is helpful because it forces me to make the book’s major insight explicit. I usually use cloze tests to run through a book’s major points. For example, my card for The Lean Startup is:
“The Lean Startup process for continuous improvement is (1) {{c1::identify the hypothesis to test}}, (2) {{c2::determine metrics with which to evaluate the hypothesis}}, (3) {{c3::build a minimum viable product}}, (4) {{c4::use the product to get data and test the hypothesis}}.”
This isn’t especially helpful if you just remember what the four phrases are, so I use this as a cue to think briefly about each of those concepts.
Does this become a single card with four blanks to fill or four cards that have all but one blank visible?
I’ll have to try that.
Indeed I’ll have to try to not forget that.