In yesterday’s podcast, I talked about spaced-repetition and how I use Anki to help with my memory. Anki is a flash card system that uses algorithms to show you cards just as you might be forgetting them.

If you are just using this casually, like I am, you only need to “study” for a few minutes a day (and skipping days or even weeks will be fine—Anki will catch you up). If you are a student who is using Anki to cram for exams, you would probably do it differently.

I built up my deck over time. I make new cards while reading or watching videos. I made a bunch last week while watching WWDC.

In the podcast, I said to use a single deck with all of your cards mixed together. So, if in a few months, you read books in different subjects, you wouldn’t make separate decks for each book or subject. This makes it a lot easier to just make cards whenever you want without thinking about it too much. It also makes studying a kind of serendipity machine.

A couple of episodes ago, I had spoken about how to generate ideas by combining disparate knowledge. Going through an Anki session of uncategorized cards helps me do that regularly.

So, in my deck today, I was asked about:

• The kinds of gates you find in QUIL quantum computing (I read Quantum Country this year which is a book with embedded spaced-repetition)
• The goals of visual design
• A specific Typescript operator
• Covey’s 7 Habits
• The parts of C4

As I think it over, there is perhaps something interesting about the communication principles in C4, the communication goals of visual design generally, and Covey’s 7 Habits—specifically “Seek First to Understand”, which is the core communication habit.

I should write a note about that.