# Spaced repetition

Date: 2021-04-07 18:19:11 +08:00Date modified: 2021-08-07 16:04:14 +08:00

Spacing out practice sessions over a period of time is more effective than cramming it all in one evening. It's because our brain takes time to absorb all of the information. Learning is not instantaneous. We might know the information now by first practice but we'll forget it sooner or later especially if we don't remember it often.

This could be used as a way to learn things and form habits. Start small and improve later by practicing over small units, make the unit per practice bigger, and repeat until you're confident to move on to other topics. For example, say you want to be efficient with competitive coding. You can start with solving only one problem per 3 days for a week. Then, you can go with 2 problems per week, then 3, then 4, and so forth.

There are various tools to practice spaced repetition.

- Anki is one of the most popular tool for this purpose with smart repetition and calculating the best time for you to repeat something.

- If you're using Org mode, org-drill is a plugin that builds on top of it to implement a spaced repetition memory system.

## Backlinks

- When starting out, focus on quantity over quality
- Learning techniques
- Learn how to forget
- Anatomy of the brain
- Presence of the material fools students into learning
- Procrastination
- Switching between different topics makes new perspective
- Recalling
- Learning how to learn