This kind of static information retention is good for me. I’m an electrician so it’s nice to know off the top of my head that there’s a 10’ spacing on supports for EMT without going to the code book every time. Some of that knowledge gets beaten in through repetition, but there are enough fringe cases and things I don’t touch for years that are nice to have memorized.

I had a major concussion shortly before my GCSE exams that I'm still very slowly recovering from. I was completely unable to think, let alone study. I never did an IQ test, but I couldn't even listen to a book or stay awake for more than a few hours without a headache. And for a while I couldn't look at a screen or read.

I was able to get the second highest grades in the school, with lower than expected grades in only two subjects (and dropping one, further maths), because of Anki. Because Anki does not require understanding, only sufficient repetition, and I had a lot of time on my hands, I was able to continuously do flashcards for hours on end while maths work would have me struggling to stay awake within 5 minutes. I could remember facts without understanding them.

The exams were ~3 months after it happened, which gave me time to improve, plus during the actual exam a combination of painkillers, extra time, rest breaks, exam technique, and adrenaline allowed me to put together a plausible answer with the disconnected facts I had learnt in the months preceeding that I just about got the mark. As a sidenote - it's quite incredible how adrenaline can temporarily improve brain injuries, with the downside that the moment it went I was completely exhausted.

Every subject bar maths I got the grades I wanted or just below, because Anki allowed me to memorise without learning.

(These subjects were: Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, English Lit, English Lang, History, Computer Science, Digital something, Creative Media Production (didn't do exam), Further Maths (dropped).)

Now, I would prefer not to revise using solely Anki, and I think the fact a braindead student with memorised facts (and good exam technique) was able to get good grades says a lot about the British education system. It also says a lot about Anki, and just how effective it is.

Side note, because I'm tired of hearing drivel on HN:

My life being (permanently?) ruined was entirely preventable, all it would have taken is a little less empathy, a little less second chances, for violent barbarians who damage everyone around them. When people preach empathy they forget about the human cost of allowing inherently violent, destructive people to continue their actions.

If you're one of those people who thinks grammar schools are bad, restorative "justice" is the future, and we should prioritise those who hurt and destroy over those who want to learn and build: Your actions and your ideology have ugly consequences beyond your selfish delusion of making the world better through being nice and kind and the power of love - that belongs in novels, not policy.

It's like exercise. As a software engineer, I'm very unlikely to need to lift heavy things or run long distances. But my body is (probably) healthier long-term if I'm able to do those things.

Disclaimer: going through my Anki decks is one of the 50 things on my 10-item to-do list. I don't get to it often enough. But it does work, and I now know how to memorize things I want to remember.

I find a good way to link together ideas is to have them easily at hand i.e. memorized. Having a motivating problem is probably a better way to do this, but I've found that motivating problems which require concepts I would like to learn are not as readily available as I'd want.

In my experience trying to follow Zettelkasten was an order of magnitude now work than spaced repetition.

you could integrate a Zettelkasten workflow with Anki. Just send over certain ZK notes into Anki. I'm working on this -- a vim based ZK tool with ability to send over notes to Anki.

We wrote pretty much the same comment. That's funny.