I Stopped Using Anki | The SRS Endgame

***MY LINKS***

[UrinTrolden]

"Your account has been removed" This is the shit i see in my nightmares. I could definietly not imagine deleting anki right now lol.

[dormian]

For below advanced level, Anki would be the best tool but after then reading is the best way a lot.

[Williamottelucas]

13:35 So you mention it yourself - reading books is a natural form of reviewing. It's the real world Anki.

[chloet]

I think your idea for an add-on to remove cards when the interval gets past a certain limit is great, the only thing I would say is that it might be best to suspend the cards rather than full-on deleting them - not because I don't think it's a good idea, but because I know that *I* wouldn't want to use an add-on that deleted my cards as it would make me think that the add-on was deleting my work, even if it seemed like a good tool to have. That's really just another part of that psychology though, I guess. I'm fine with deleting my own cards if they're not useful, but *I* want to be the one to do that.

[Re_ii]

I am so glad I've found you channel 3 weeks ago, Matt. At that time I thought about quitting japanese after on year of traditional and phonetic studies. Then I saw you, your 3 hour vid and all the other Anki-related things and it was like an epiphany for me, because the whole process using Anki and Tobira was not really fun. I even stopped watching anime for the whole year, killing the best study-method for a nerd like me. Instead I played games in japanese without learning the important words in there. Then I somehow made a shift to learning for the jlpt, because I thought with N2 you probably can understand the most important things... exactly at that point (learning only for n3 and n2, making nonsense flashcards ala "fluent-forever" (just a word with an image) I found your interview about having jlpt n1 but still not being fluent. This opened my eyes. Studying has to be fun and relevant for everyday life, not just doing anki-reps all day long like I am used to it. This video about srs in general opens my eyes again. Hopefully I will be as wise as you when I reach the point of basically understand the things that matter most to me.

TLDR: Thank you for your videos, Matt. I am sure these will enlighten thousands of language-learners.
Thank you, you made me continue my study and see this whole thing from another perspective.
Best regards from a german guy, please keep making these high-quality videos!

[VietPham-qmeq]

Hope someday you will read this. But from the bottom of my heart, I'm truly greatful for what you did in this video. I'm an intermediate English learner, maybe almost get to the point of becoming fluent. And you're absolutely right. I myself too, always have this burning desire to be done with this fucking tedious vocab learning, so that I can be free. And the price is too steep... Thanks for enlightening me. Only now do i realize I have so many more important things to do than just sitting in front of a computer and reviewing cards. Thank you!

[lynkkx]

this is basically me and video games for half my life. I would play all these mmo's and mobile games, do all these daily quest shit for each game like some mechanical routine job for than 8 hours a day and felt that I needed to do it or I would fall behind in terms of progress vs other people playing the game. eventually you start to realize that wow, why am I torturing myself like this, I could just drop the game if I don't enjoy it anymore and it actually is just that simple. You may feel like damn you put so much time into it that you think you might as well should just commit to it, but that is literally just you fooling yourself, once you realize that is all it is then you can break out of the loop. You should always do things you enjoy, that is the reason why we live life. We only have one, so why not make the best out of it right. After that is all said and done, I do still play games, just a rarely, usually rpg's where you just enjoy the story and then you uninstall and move on, I do the occasional shooter games with friends like apex legends for like an hour or 2 every now and then. but yeah, I am not slaving myself over anything anymore, I just spend my time either being productive and trying to improve myself or I spend it on actually enjoying something, life just gets so much lighter once you just let go of all that heavy baggage. I do wish I could get all that time back, but I am pretty content with how I live now. Hopefully others that are stuck in these type of loops/holes can take something off of this.

[Aadrian]

I remember having the same feeling when I got fluent in French, so I just deleted all my decks and started a new one where I'd only put words or phrases that I kept for a very short time (deleted them after a couple of months). I do the same thing in English though I hardly ever review these decks (they aren't that big, like 200 words/expressions at most)

The key is to have a very limited deck with only the newest words you encounter in the language, which you get rid of anyway. If it gets too big or you have too many reps, just delete it and start over with fewer words.

[korona]

The #1 lesson in this is to be kind to yourself

[JohnnyUtah]

It's obvious you've thought very deeply about this, and I enjoyed hearing your opinions. You helped solidify a lot of misgivings I've had about SRS lately but couldn't articulate. Thank you!

[rettcobb]

This video is really something.

Your jaw would drop if you could see all the decks in my account. Ten different languages, all through the fifth level Pimsleurs (which are not very advanced, admittedly), then branching into Living Language and Pod101. After that, advanced youtube-sourced decks.

I've gone through phases of anxiety, cutting back and shutting down all the decks, only to come back the next day to slowly open them up all again.

And then you keep telling yourself, "No, I'm not advanced enough yet to let go and immerse in the language." It's therapeutic to know others are dealing successfully with the anki-xiety.

Thank you.

[pethaudiddorol]

You going through these trials and tribulations, then imparting your experience and knowledge is a blessing! Thank you very much!

[dengaideng]

I’m late here but I studied Japanese off and on for a long time and last year decided I’d commit to something, so I started wanikani. It felt like an easy way to get into SRS, the idea of making my own flash cards just felt like to easy of an out for me to do less. I know Matt’s pushed anki but I just wanted some rails so I could just get memorizing and not worry about it.
I’m 10 months in and there are definitely parts of this I agree with this. Doing SRS requires dedication every day, and missing a day and playing catch up is not ideal. Really, SRS seems to be hyper focused on cramming as much as quickly as possible. It is a wonderful tool to get an initial hook, a quick translation, a reading, some impression so it can stick. I think it’s a wonderful tool to cram the top 5-10 thousand words of a language so you don’t have to read from a dictionary. But I really don’t know that I want to keep with it after that, I feel that immersion in text and audio is the way to go. I may “learn” fewer words, but I learn natural usage, and it doesn’t have to be as much mental work. If I can spend two hours a day reading a book, that’s going to be more fulfilling to me than flash cards for two hours.
Overall I think it’s been a wonderful tool and my Japanese comprehension has skyrocketed, but I’m feeling burnt out from how much work it is. It’s a great hook in but if I’m not using the material in practice then it’s not critical for me to be fretting over.

[officialExcerpt]

I think you just cleared up a lot of my issues with Anki and worries about putting too much time into it or prioritizing it over immersion of books, etc.. It's a tool to help your immersion, and not to be overdone or used as a secondary memory bank.

[oscarchavezart]

Matt, I feel your pain and fear on your quote of, "if I let go of the SRS I would forget everything that I knew." This I would feel myself also, a few months back. But talking to an older and wiser guy, who learned Japanese in another way, I told him about this fear, and he said that it would not happened. He encouraged me to take a break, and go do a different activity in the language that I understand, I tried it, and guess what, the brain comes back with mad skills and is able to process things much quicker and able to remember things much better. I do this for about an hour or two, or maybe a day, and it really helps me.
I remember Kats posted once about taking a break, by listening to another language that is completely different and white noise to you. That is one way, but what ever it may be, the process has to fit the person like how Kats said.

[MEMEParoLaPo]

Oh man I have been using Anki for almost 3 years and I understand that feeling, "I can't sleep at my friend house because I need to review hundreds of flashcards" actually I learned a lot of words, so I just kept going, probably I have spent more than 200 hours making my flashcards... So far I have used anki, in fact I yesterday studied my flashcards and I have more than 1000 pending cards, but you have opened my eyes bro, I study chinese, I know a lot of vocab but I need to work in my listening skill, how ever most of the days I spend a lot of time on anki, but for my today is the end of the game too...
THANK YOU, now I am going to read and listen to chinese for 2 hours every day instead use Anki
Right now, I'm not be able to delete my anki decks, if I think about it I feel a kind of panic but I will try it,
Thanks

[Lucas-geyh]

some really useful information here matt! thanks for the video

[hollyy]

I think this is a really important video for anyone learning to use Anki. I've been using it for a while for Japanese and have been considering using it for my college studies. I think I could've easily fallen into this mindset and addiction - like you say in the video, it seems so easy, you just put things in here and it makes you remember them. I never thought about it in the way you suggest, as a temporary thing and I think that's a really important point to avoid that kind of addiction you had.

[WoefulWolf]

Probably going off on a tangent but I'm so glad someone brought up how weird antimoon sounds. It can be a little discouraging knowing that the guys there spent so long at learning English and clearly use a method that works and yet it still just reads plain *weird*. Particularly with the amount of idioms it just feels more like showing off than actually clarifying what they're trying to say. It's like a language uncanny valley almost.

[ihiqbwo]

Apart from the videos content, which is obviously also very great, your ability to articulate your thoughts is somehow so admirable