This reminds me of the Steve Jobs comment [1] about condors and bicycles:
“I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy to move a kilometer. And, humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing, about a third of the way down the list. It was not too proud a showing for the crown of creation. So, that didn’t look so good. But, then somebody at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle. And, a man on a bicycle, a human on a bicycle, blew the condor away, completely off the top of the charts. And that’s what a computer is to me. What a computer is to me is it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with, and it’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.”
I agree that writing by hand (the condor) is better than typing (the human), but the missing part is Spaced Repetition (the bicycle.) Typing information into a SRS system is almost certainly more effective at retaining information than handwriting alone is.
I suppose you could handwrite cards and use something like the Leitner system [2], but this is extremely inefficient compared to using Anki/a software program. At the end of the day, if you seriously want to retain information, you should just use a SRS, full stop.
Probably true for facts that you need to be able to recall without consulting notes.
Most of my notes are not that. I mostly don't need unassisted recall. Spaced repetition memorization of everything I write down in my notebook would be very inappropriate and an inefficient use of my time and memory resources.
I find that most times the goal is just to have the information, and when you write it down by hand in the first place you're more likely to remember it. Seems overkill to put more effort into it.
It depends on how adept you are at creating cards, I think. If you have a non-manual pipeline that automates most of the work, I think the lifetime cost of reviewing a card a few times is comparable to writing out the same information out by hand. The difference with the card is that now this information is there for life, instead of for a few days/weeks with writing.
Agree that if we're talking about manual creation of cards, it can be hard to see the ROI given how much effort it typically takes to create high-quality one-off questions and answers.
“I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy to move a kilometer. And, humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing, about a third of the way down the list. It was not too proud a showing for the crown of creation. So, that didn’t look so good. But, then somebody at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle. And, a man on a bicycle, a human on a bicycle, blew the condor away, completely off the top of the charts. And that’s what a computer is to me. What a computer is to me is it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with, and it’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.”
I agree that writing by hand (the condor) is better than typing (the human), but the missing part is Spaced Repetition (the bicycle.) Typing information into a SRS system is almost certainly more effective at retaining information than handwriting alone is.
I suppose you could handwrite cards and use something like the Leitner system [2], but this is extremely inefficient compared to using Anki/a software program. At the end of the day, if you seriously want to retain information, you should just use a SRS, full stop.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c__DV-Ul9AM
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leitner_system