hey what is going on guys so i think we
can all agree that studying takes far
far too much time so what i want to do
in this video is show you guys how you
can remember more of what you learn even
if you're spending fewer actual hours
studying and the way to do that is by
spacing out that study time this is a
technique called spaced repetition and
to do it you add progressively longer
and longer time intervals in between
each of your study sessions so in this
video i want to show you exactly how you
can do that both with your paper flash
cards and with apps both for smartphones
and computers but first i wanted to get
into why this technique is so powerful
and also talk to you a little bit about
the history behind it and how it relates
to our memories in general space
repetition leverages a memory phenomenon
known as the spacing effect which
describes how our brains make better
connections and overall remember things
more effectively when we space out our
learning over time here's how pierce j
howard the author of my least favorite
book to haul into coffee shops puts it
work involving higher mental functions
such as analysis and synthesis needs to
be spaced out in order to allow new
neural connections to solidify new
learning drives out old learning when
insufficient time intervenes and we've
actually known about this effect for
quite a long time back in the late 1800s
a psychologist named herbert ebbinghaus
basically launched the field of memory
science itself by embarking upon an
intense study where he made himself
memorize long long lists of nonsense
syllables and through that research he
eventually came to develop what's called
the forgetting curve which describes how
memories decay over time but what he
also learned is that by spacing out his
efforts to memorize these lists he could
put in less actual study time to get
them memorized perfectly for example for
one list of 12 syllables he found that
it took him 68 repetitions on one day
and then 7 repetitions the next day to
memorize it perfectly but by spacing out
his studying over the course of three
days he found he could achieve the same
level of perfection in only 38
repetitions over the past 130 years
since he published his findings lots of
other studies have been able to
replicate the same positive results
which leads us to the question why does
the spacing effect work well to put it
in simple terms it turns out that one of
the most important parts of the learning
process is actually
forgetting now what forgetting truly is
is a subject for another video that i'll
publish in the future but the most
important thing to note here is that the
more we've forgotten something that is
the harder we have to work to retrieve
it since we last learned it or studied
it the greater the increase in learning
will be to make this a bit more clear
here's how the author benedict carey who
wrote the book how we learn explains it
some amount of breakdown must occur for
us to strengthen learning when we
revisit the material without a little
forgetting you get no benefit from
further study it is what allows learning
to build like an exercised muscle and
that's the main reason why carrie calls
space repetition one of the most
powerful methods for remembering what
you learn in his book and i would add to
that the fact that you can do this with
basically any other learning technique
it's entirely complementary because it's
all about just modifying the time
periods in which you study you can do
anything within those time periods
you're just using the time periods as
intelligently as possible with that
being said now i want to get into how
you can put space repetition into action
and implement it into your own study
systems and we're going to talk about
apps and computer programs that you can
use in a minute here but first i want to
talk about a system that you can use
with your paper flash cards which is
called the lightner system and here's
how it works the first step is to decide
on a number of boxes that you're going
to use to hold the cards in your system
now i don't actually own little boxes so
i've just substituted rubber bands and
sticky notes that say box but that
actually works just as well and actually
makes the system more portable so that's
pretty cool and from there each
individual box is going to represent a
different study time interval so box one
might be studying every day box two
might be studied every other day and so
on and when you're studying your cards
in the boxes every time you get a card
right it's going to graduate to the next
box so you're going to see it less and
less often but if you get a card wrong
it's going to go all the way to box
number one no matter where it was and by
using the system you get two main
benefits number one you're maximizing
your learning through the spacing effect
but number two you're also studying more
efficiently because you're spending more
time in the cards that need the most
attention and less time on the ones you
know really well rather than studying
every single card equally now this paper
system works really well for both of
those goals but if you want to take
advantage of more advanced scheduling
algorithms and other features you're
going to need to find yourself a space
repetition app and there are a lot of
contenders in this area but i want to
focus first on what is probably the most
popular one right now and that is called
anki anki has a huge community it's
insanely customizable and best of all it
has apps for almost every platform out
there and almost all of them are free
with the exception of the iphone app
which oddly costs a whopping 25
now i think the price is that high
because it's their way of basically
letting people support the app since
it's free everywhere else but if you're
on an iphone you don't want to pay that
much fear not because anki also has a
companion web app called ankiweb which
is accessible from mobile safari so you
can use that for free if you want now
with anki creating cards is really
really easy and i really like the fact
that you can add basically any kind of
media you want to your cards including
pictures which is awesome because adding
pictures to your flashcards can really
help increase retention however the
killer feature of anki is the ability to
rate cards based on difficulty when
you're studying them so essentially when
you turn a card over you can tell the
program how hard it was for you to
dredge the answer up from the depths of
your memory and it will use that data to
decide how long it's going to be before
you see that card again and that's
really the main strength of space
repetition apps versus a paper system
each individual card can be tracked can
have a difficulty rating and can be
adjusted in the algorithm so you're
getting the most benefit of the spacing
effect anki is definitely not the only
space repetition app out there though so
if you're looking for alternatives i've
got a few things in mind for you to take
a look at number one being an app called
tiny cards which i showed off in my
previous video on how to make better
flash cards now tiny cards is only for
the iphone unfortunately but there
should be an android version coming soon
and honestly when compared to anki i
think it's a lot more simple a lot
prettier and the process of making cards
is more fun and faster because they have
an excellent system for adding images to
your cards aside from tiny cards there
are also apps like flash cards deluxe
memrise super memo nemesin eidetic
quizlet and probably a bunch of others
that i don't even know about right now
but i'm sure you will let me know about
down in the comments so before i wrap
this video up i have a couple more
things i want to mention number one
being that the script i wrote for this
video is actually about half the length
of the blog post i wrote so if you want
a lot more detail especially pertaining
to the memory bits and how the spacing
effect works you can click the blog post
link in the description down below or on
the card on screen right now and read to
your heart's content also and i have
been really excited to announce this for
quite a long time now there is now an
official college info geek t-shirt on
dftba.com and i am super super stoked
about this i've already ordered mine
there's going to be a link down in the
description also a card so if you would
like to get your very own shirt which
may or may not grant superpowers you can
click either of those links and order
one now one cool thing about the shirt's
design is it was actually created by the
college info geek community my good
friend ashley did the hand letter design
itself but the mantra the saying on the
shirt was actually decided upon by
people in the college invoked community
over on reddit which i think is really
really cool and i would love to continue
to play up this community aspect so if
you get a shirt i would love to see you
tweeting awesome pictures of you wearing
it just send it to me over on tomfrankly
and i will probably retweet them you can
also put them in the reddit as well if
you like and other than that that's all
i have for this video guys so thanks so
much for watching if you found it useful
give it a like to support this channel
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button you can find the previous video
right over there which was about how to
use flashcards more effectively and if
you want to find that awesome article
which is way more detailed than this
video was go to the full article thing
right there if you'd like to connect
with me you can use the social media
links down below but there's also a
non-zero probability that you can
connect with me by yelling into a conch
shell so maybe give that a try too