When I started to work after college I was surprised when people asked “How comes you don’t know X? Haven’t you read the manual?” I was surprised because in college it take more than one reading, a form of repetition, to learn, know and remember things. I would replay “I have read it, but have not yet memorized it.”
Interestingly, later on, I managed to remember things after one reading, not details, but the general idea.
I wonder about the popularity of Anki and spaced repetition here. I am experimenting it for conditioning, but for learning, do you really need to remember things in more detail than a single reading allows, if you aren’t preparing for college exams anymore?
Note: I think the remembering after one reading worked later on, because it was more of the which of the options to choose. Like where do you find the inventory cost report? Obvious candidates are warehouse menu and finance menu. I think in college I needed to memorize things when the answer was not choosing from known options but something I could not even imagine.
Are you using spaced repetition because you have more of the second type?
The good thing about becoming an expert in a narrow field is that sooner or later you know all the options, which means you are a lightning fast learner. You just look at something, take a not of which of the known options it has, and know all about it. Like a doctor making a diagnosis. Checkmark checkmark checkmark.
For most of the work stuff I find it easier to remember where to find things rather than the things themselves.
The hard stuff is the undocumented and constantly changing locations and procedures where a search is likely to find out of date junk.
On spaced repetition / Anki:
When I started to work after college I was surprised when people asked “How comes you don’t know X? Haven’t you read the manual?” I was surprised because in college it take more than one reading, a form of repetition, to learn, know and remember things. I would replay “I have read it, but have not yet memorized it.”
Interestingly, later on, I managed to remember things after one reading, not details, but the general idea.
I wonder about the popularity of Anki and spaced repetition here. I am experimenting it for conditioning, but for learning, do you really need to remember things in more detail than a single reading allows, if you aren’t preparing for college exams anymore?
Note: I think the remembering after one reading worked later on, because it was more of the which of the options to choose. Like where do you find the inventory cost report? Obvious candidates are warehouse menu and finance menu. I think in college I needed to memorize things when the answer was not choosing from known options but something I could not even imagine.
Are you using spaced repetition because you have more of the second type?
The good thing about becoming an expert in a narrow field is that sooner or later you know all the options, which means you are a lightning fast learner. You just look at something, take a not of which of the known options it has, and know all about it. Like a doctor making a diagnosis. Checkmark checkmark checkmark.
For most of the work stuff I find it easier to remember where to find things rather than the things themselves. The hard stuff is the undocumented and constantly changing locations and procedures where a search is likely to find out of date junk.