Polar and incremental reading

jameslongley

Is anyone using Polar (www.getpolarized.io) and an incremental reading approach ('popularised' by Piotr Wozniak from Supermemo). How do you combine your zettelkasten and incremental reading approaches?

Nick

I tried this combo before getting into zettelkasten in general (I loved Piotr Wozniak's personal wiki on learning). But there is just so much information out there that I felt the supermemo strategy (incremental reading + memorization) didn't make sense. You see this with people who get crazy large memorization databases and become overwhelmed.

What I do instead is input everything into my zettelkasten, and if I come across something that is vital to memorize from the get go than I copy it into Anki. If I don't have time to do that then I just slap a #Anki tag on the note and input into a spaced repetition program later. But I don't do this a lot because important information tends to get naturally memorized because of its frequency of use, such as my dogs name.

I may try polar again though. I think when I looked at it last, it wasn't supporting the epub or mobile format I was using, so I was only able to read on the computer. It looks like that has changed, so I will give that a try.

amunicapunica

I don't. When something comes up where i need to memorize hard facts or a certain formulation and be able to repeat them immediately, i go analog and use simple flashcards. I do them first in the morning or before bed. Regarding everything else, I engage with the project naturally or disengage. I trust the process. I love learning about new stuff, but i do not feel the need "to make the most out of it" and work on a high retention rate in my free time.

Why? I prepared for legal exams over a period of two years. You do not want to sit at the computer doing flashcards for 5 hours. And i get distracted easily (hello youtube). And i tend to work on the system itself instead of using it (hello asana and gtd approaches). And i tend to collect information like crazy when i habe unlimited space and content, which is deadly because you need to learn the essentials and practice them, or you will know much stuff, but will not be able to "bring the horse power onto the street".

jameslongley

@amunicapunica said:
I don't. When something comes up where i need to memorize hard facts or a certain formulation and be able to repeat them immediately, i go analog and use simple flashcards. I do them first in the morning or before bed. Regarding everything else, I engage with the project naturally or disengage. I trust the process. I love learning about new stuff, but i do not feel the need "to make the most out of it" and work on a high retention rate in my free time.

Why? I prepared for legal exams over a period of two years. You do not want to sit at the computer doing flashcards for 5 hours. And i get distracted easily (hello youtube). And i tend to work on the system itself instead of using it (hello asana and gtd approaches). And i tend to collect information like crazy when i habe unlimited space and content, which is deadly because you need to learn the essentials and practice them, or you will know much stuff, but will not be able to "bring the horse power onto the street".

Great points here - I think this really speaks to the danger of 'productive procrastination' that all of these approaches can lend themselves to.