Hating SuperMemo
This text is part of: "I would never send my kids to school" by Piotr Wozniak (2017)
SuperMemo as a tool of effective learning can be a source of immense pleasure. However, many users hate spaced repetition and drop out. A significant proportion of users hate learning with SuperMemo and still persist. One of the key culprits behind this phenomenon is schooling. It is at school that kids get conditioned to believe that being conscientious in learning pays back in good grades, awards, and accolades. Conscientious students do their homework like clockwork even if they hate it. Conscientious students study hard even if they hate the subject matter, or a particular book they are prescribed to read or learn from. Years later, the same students, treat SuperMemo like a school chore. They plan how much material they need to master and in what time. If the backlog or repetitions mounts up, they persist, work harder, and stay up longer. It is not unusual for users to hate SuperMemo, and still love their own ability to persist in pain of ineffectual review. Dozens of memory lapses, dozens of leeches are not a problem. Leeches poison the learning process, take away the pleasure of learning, and are used almost like a badge of honor by pumping up the review statistics and the statistic of time devoted to ineffective learning.
The infamous Outstanding parameter becomes a form of religion. If it does not get down to 0+0, users feel like a failure. This attitude towards review has percolated to other applications that rely on spaced repetition. Many have the aura of homework built into their design, incl. fake rewards to motivate learning.
This all stands in violation of the Fundamental law of learning. Learning should be its own reward. Otherwise, it will never be effective. The brain knows it best, and can evaluate knowledge and evaluate progress. For students who have been accustomed to conscientious learning, violating the principles of effective learning is a norm. It is a second nature. The nature that has been schooled in. In the end, knowledge is secondary, and what matters most to a well-schooled student is marks of progress.
In contrast, effective learning, based on incremental reading can be a source of never-ending, sustainable, and inexhaustible pleasure. The pleasure of knowing is enhanced with the pleasure of creativity, the pleasure of productivity, and the pleasure of learning new things that keep flowing in in the reading process.
If you hate your learning today, if you hate SuperMemo, stop learning, and reassess. For example, use Mercy and cut your workload to 5-10% of your current load. Spend more time per item and question its value for your life and its impact on the learning process. Use Delete or Forget profusely. Use priorities and mark all questionable material with Priority=99% (i.e. lowest possible). Perhaps you can de-prioritize or Mercy entire branches of knowledge that you like less. Turn on auto-postpone and auto-sort. Use Ctrl+J and send all suspect materials to interval of 999 days. There is always hope that the material you hate will gain on coherence overtime by slotting in into your new knowledge. Read 20 rules. Adopt incremental reading. Once you dilute your learning process, and soften the pain, chances are, you will regain your mental control over the burdensome process of learning.
If you hate SuperMemo today, and change nothing, you will hate it in 10 years too. That will be 10 years wasted on ineffective and painful learning that might instead be a source of pleasure, improved mood, and higher productivity in learning and elsewhere in your life. Why should you keep drinking poison that affects your life. Don't let SuperMemo be your school substitute. You are free to choose, and you should choose for the fun of learning.
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