After 12 years, from age 17 to age 29, of using every spaced repetition tool under the sun to learn all kinds of weird little things, this is the advice I have to give to anyone feeling like they’re dying under the burden of Anki repetitions.

Every minute of your life which passes resculpts, often imperceptibly, the way your neurons are wired together. Anki is a tool which allows you to get certain neurons to fire together at an interval which science has loosely deemed ‘optimal’ for keeping them wired together.

That’s it. That’s all it does. And you can choose anything to put in there. Your shoe size. The names and faces of your coworkers. Pictures from your wedding. Videos of your kids playing in a sprinkler park. The last words of famous men. Leetcode problems. A simple list of life lessons you discovered when you were younger and decided it made sense to steer by. Things you notice make your 2 year old niece howl with laughter. Mistakes you will never make again. Gwern’s list of ordinary life improvements since the 1990s. Photos of delicious things you made with instructions on the back. An instruction to mentally run up and down the Lydian scale on a fretboard. Minecraft recipes. The names of different kinds of clouds.

It is up to you. But no matter what, at the end of the day, all you are doing is sculpting your brain. Don’t fall hostage to the chisel.

From a reddit user: https://www.reddit.com/r/Anki/comments/171gwp3/its_not_retaining_information_its_sculpting_your/