There are two ways in which it’s saved me hundreds of hours. These are of course anecdotal, but the science behind Spaced Repetition is pretty solid.
1. We naturally forget information after a certain amount of time. Much of this information has to be relearned at some point; I’d estimate we end up learning the same fact at least a dozen times over the course of our lifetime. SRS can cut this relearning time to the minimum necessary.
2. By optimizing for ‘daily maximum possible learning.’ This is related to the Spacing Effect and it’s a crucial idea underlying SRS.
In my personal experience, there is a limit to the amount of information you can meaningful acquire per day. After that point, it becomes a waste of time and effort. So, by dividing learning materials into smaller pieces and spreading them out over time, you can reduce the amount of time needed to learn them.
This is particularly relevant for useful-but-not-urgent information, like alphabets or geography. For example, trying to learn and remember the Russian alphabet in a single day will probably take you a few hours, if not all day. Learn one letter per day over the course of three months, however, and your daily time requirement is perhaps a few minutes. The retention rate per minute of time invested is dramatically higher.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition
https://apps.ankiweb.net
There are two ways in which it’s saved me hundreds of hours. These are of course anecdotal, but the science behind Spaced Repetition is pretty solid.
1. We naturally forget information after a certain amount of time. Much of this information has to be relearned at some point; I’d estimate we end up learning the same fact at least a dozen times over the course of our lifetime. SRS can cut this relearning time to the minimum necessary.
2. By optimizing for ‘daily maximum possible learning.’ This is related to the Spacing Effect and it’s a crucial idea underlying SRS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacing_effect
In my personal experience, there is a limit to the amount of information you can meaningful acquire per day. After that point, it becomes a waste of time and effort. So, by dividing learning materials into smaller pieces and spreading them out over time, you can reduce the amount of time needed to learn them.
This is particularly relevant for useful-but-not-urgent information, like alphabets or geography. For example, trying to learn and remember the Russian alphabet in a single day will probably take you a few hours, if not all day. Learn one letter per day over the course of three months, however, and your daily time requirement is perhaps a few minutes. The retention rate per minute of time invested is dramatically higher.