# What Everyone Gets WRONG About Spaced Repetition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuI_eD1VbqU

[00:00] hey everyone it's dr justin here again.
[00:02] uh and we're talking about space repetition uh again and it's a very juicy topic i know and we i cover this a lot um.
[00:12] but we're gonna focus in on just what people uh misunderstand about space repetition.
[00:18] and i know that i've covered this before but i feel that i need to cover this again to really clarify a few things and to convince the people that are not convinced i guess about what the issue with space repetition is because there are good things it's just that you have to understand what the good things are and then what the limiting parts are.
[00:37] because if you think that it's going to get you you know all these amazing results you frankly just statistically that's unlikely to happen and i'm just gonna in this video today uh we went through this conversation.
[00:52] my goal is to try to just make that really really clear where it is just so logical that that could not be the case.
[00:59] uh we've got stephanie here.
[01:01] who's a student that's going through the course has that you know sort of more technical knowledge about some of the techniques we've got marvin here who is a professional as well as a student looking at things from a slightly different angle and so i'm going to start off by asking both of you what is your experience personally in your own studying uh with space repetition space retrieval and using techniques especially you know things like just anki anki flash cards well let me make this very very clear because i don't want to get sued i don't have i don't have anything against anki in itself i think it's good for what it was designed to do i just think people don't understand what it is designed to do or the actual underlying research behind it and the extent and limitation of where that research starts and ends okay so let me just make that super super clear all right so there's nothing wrong with anki it's about how you're using the tool all right so what's your experience with that so yeah it's it's a quite interesting question because i'm a heavy anki user i used to be
[02:02] i did i don't know in between 300 and 600 cars a day.
[02:07] and fed like yeah okay i have to go through.
[02:11] i only have to go through my anki cards every day and then i will be good.
[02:15] and yeah i improved to be honest so from cs i made it to a minus to be not minus in in in terms of degrees.
[02:27] but from time to time i felt like oh my god the information do not stick and i i repeat the same question on the same day five times and i'm like how the hell i ca i really can't memorize these things so am i dumb.
[02:46] it's a regular question i ask myself super super common and i would actually you know ask the audience listening to this right now like how many of you resonate with that story because i've already heard you know this story or it's variations you know thousands of times you know your experience marvin is probably the quintessential experience of most people.
[03:03] that use anki most people that use anki
[03:05] are not finding that it's like completely catastrophically failing them
[03:08] most people are finding yeah it's getting me some results
[03:13] and it's actually better than when they weren't using it but then there are all these sort of limitations and the problem is that we start normalizing these limitations
[03:19] we say oh that's that's just how learning is
[03:22] it just has to be this way that's really interesting because for me i actually didn't really use anki a lot
[03:29] i first heard about space repetition maybe four or five years ago but even before that i think it's really popular for people to use flash cards and honestly speaking i think i've always thought that it was overhyped
[03:41] i mean i had my own ways of studying before i joined the course and didn't really use flash cards or anki or anything of that sort and i saw my looked at my friends all spending hours and hours and hours on flash cards and meanwhile they still weren't getting grades nearly as good
[03:57] so i was wondering something's clearly not right here
[04:03] so the reason that you thought it was
[04:04] overhyped.
[04:05] I did because I saw so many people wasting time and I felt I don't see the need.
[04:10] But then when I got introduced to Anki and the whole theory of spaced repetition, I thought, okay, extending the forgetting curve, that makes sense.
[04:17] You should have a regular revision schedule, makes sense, so I decided to give it a try.
[04:23] But here's the thing, I did give it my best.
[04:25] I went into the whole Reddit um rabbit hole, tried and to tinker around with the settings, but I realized I ended up wasting more time setting up Anki and actually studying with it.
[04:37] And in the end, I still felt like I remembered nothing.
[04:39] And I figured, okay, I'll just go back to my regular way of studying.
[04:43] Here's the thing, um, I want to focus in on like one specific point that we talked about first, which is the idea of like, but it works.
[04:52] Like, sure, you're saying that the theory of like spaced repetition and stuff has got its limitations, sure, most people can accept that, but it works for me.
[05:02] What can I do in addition to this?
[05:03] Actually, I was
[05:04] running a workshop yesterday and um.
[05:06] someone asked me this very very same question.
[05:07] they said well it works for me.
[05:09] um so what can i do in addition to what i'm already doing.
[05:13] but here's the thing.
[05:15] if you need to do something like five or six times in repetition for it to work.
[05:25] is it actually working or not.
[05:28] see the only way that we can justify that it works is if we normalize the idea that information has to be repeated multiple times for it to stick.
[05:40] if that is the if we rely on the fundamental premise that the only way that you are able to learn effectively is through multiple repetitions then yes.
[05:47] it's very effective because it does exactly that.
[05:54] except that's not the case and in fact we know that's not the case in fact if you think about it we know that you're not having to always repeat things over and over again.
[06:05] for literally everything that you learn.
[06:07] we know that you don't have to always learn in this way.
[06:09] we know that some piece of information we're able to hold on to for a long time without doing repetition.
[06:14] especially when it comes to things like instruments or hobbies or your favorite movie or your favorite book or sports that you play.
[06:22] you're not having to memorize this through repetition and the human brain did not adapt to be to need to do that.
[06:29] you know you the example i often give is like back in like the the gatherer hunter days when we're like living in caves and stuff like we weren't walking around and then like you know at the fire pit every single night like having our stone flash card tablets was like what is the angle at which i need to stab a deer like where are the blueberries located like you're not having to space repetition this in order to hold in our heads.
[06:54] like human brain adapted to be able to actually learn very effectively but it's only able to learn effectively it's stuff that it's meant to hold on to.
[07:01] because if you just learn literally everything that you're exposed to your brain will just explode.
[07:07] there's just so much so your brain is having to actively filter things out and so if it's irrelevant it will forget it.
[07:13] so the problem here is that we're saying learning what i'm studying is irrelevant to me and my brain wants to forget it.
[07:22] let me just smash it into my brain over and over again so that it holds on to the information and therefore we're saying that this is effective learning.
[07:32] right so some people often think that flash cards and space repetition and anki is effective but it's not time efficient.
[07:39] but actually it's the same thing if it worked you wouldn't have to do it so much.
[07:44] you wouldn't have to over compensate with more repetitions and more time investment.
[07:50] so the reason it's not time efficient is because it is not effective.
[07:55] so the reason that we have this huge big fixation of space repetition and things like anki and this research it was all based on was that the early research on spacing and actually still research and spacing now shows that there is a
[08:08] positive effect on your retention and your learning outcomes when you have space retrieval it's a good thing to have you should have some space repetition in there.
[08:17] what we're saying is not that you shouldn't have it what we're saying is that we need to know what it achieves and what it doesn't achieve.
[08:27] and so the later research coming out even in the just last sort of couple years is saying that space retrieval and things like anki they're good for holding on to isolated random facts and information that seem seemingly irrelevant.
[08:44] but we do not think that it's good for problem solving we do not think it's good for answering questions or retrieving on information in a more complex way we do not think it's good for relating multiple things together so any type of curveball question you get asked in an exam anki's not going to be good for that.
[09:00] we do not even know if it's useful for things for for larger more complex pieces of information in itself something like learning concepts we
[09:08] don't even think that it actually works for that and research is even showing that it may only be useful for people that are operating at a lower level of cognitive capacity.
[09:19] so really what we know is that space repetition of flashcards is an extremely common technique that's used by a lot of top achievers.
[09:29] it's also an extremely common technique used by every other type of achiever including the people that fail.
[09:35] so it's just a common thing that's used by everyone it doesn't mean that it's the secret weapon of top achievers it's just literally the weapon that everyone uses.
[09:43] you know it's like it's not the bringing the gun to the knife fight it's like wearing the shoes to go outside it's like everyone is doing it.
[09:52] if you're not even wearing the shoes like you know you're probably at a disadvantage but it's not gonna be the thing that sits you at the very top.
[09:59] there's something else that's going on there.
[10:02] um and so when we're thinking about how we're actually assessed on this information as we get especially higher in education.
[10:10] levels the way that we're assessed is often not just at these lower levels of just you know recalling a single fact.
[10:17] it's more about bringing multiple facts and multiple concepts together creating kind of a web of understanding and expressing that.
[10:24] it's about discussing these ideas in more detail.
[10:29] right we often have to do a lot of comparison between the ideas.
[10:32] we'll have to actually evaluate the quality of these ideas and concepts.
[10:36] we have to represent some of these different structures with each other and any type of question that asks on that.
[10:42] which is especially senior high school onwards if you're trying to reach higher grades that's almost exclusively the way that you differentiate it from other students.
[10:51] something like flashcards is not going to help with that at all.
[10:54] in fact it's actually worse because it's going to take time away from you doing something else that actually would have been more effective.
[11:02] because marvin as you're sort of talking about how if you're doing three to four hundred flash cards a day you do not have time to do anything else.
[11:07] you barely have enough time to just breathe or
[11:10] exist let alone like find a new method.
[11:13] of studying it's actually going to work for you.
[11:15] so that's the key is understanding this opportunity cost like what are we losing by doing that and understanding that there are actually alternatives.
[11:24] so the question there is usually well what are the alternatives and the answer to that as well that's rather complicated and there's a lot that we can talk about there and i do talk about in other videos and i'm not going to go through in depth right now here because there is a lot but you know we we do talk about that and obviously those of you that are just wanting to jump into it you can just jump onto the course um that i've got but you know there are alternatives and they do work.
[11:49] and in fact i think it'd actually be useful if you guys share a little bit about your experience about how you found it maybe marvin moore you because definitely you sort of weren't really into the whole anchor space to begin with but marvin like how did things change for you when you started using some of the alternatives.
[12:03] it was it was crazy because i felt disarmed as you mentioned anki is a weapon and the meter or the most people.
[12:12] are using at the moment this weapon.
[12:14] because of several videos.
[12:18] which are out there.
[12:19] till the point that you are end up in anki hell.
[12:23] reddit users slow progress uh i changed the whole system and now anki is only super very superficial for me.
[12:31] it's more like i jump into a lecture.
[12:34] i did my pre-study thing in the lecture.
[12:36] i make the right notes i put it into a chunk map and it sticks.
[12:41] it's so crazy it's like magic and before that i had like six to eight or maybe 10 anki sessions.
[12:50] um and then it felt it sticked but only it stick for the exam and afterwards it went directly straight to garbage.
[12:59] yeah you know that it's kind of like magic.
[13:01] it's like it's actually not even magic it's just literally how your brain works.
[13:05] when your brain feels the information is relevant and worth holding on to it will naturally hold on to it because that's literally what it was designed to do.
[13:13] it's just that this entire system of how we study is built on really outdated research.
[13:18] you know this is like 50 to 70 years old you know the research.
[13:22] and then now if you were to look at just the research in the last five years more and more researchers are starting to realize it's not actually producing consistent results.
[13:30] a minority of students using this technique are actually getting these results are actually getting good results.
[13:36] there's something that's not working here.
[13:37] people are just dying or why is upset but experience anecdote like real world practical experience and research always is delayed.
[13:43] there's usually a 10 to 20 year delay between that once practitioners realize something's up before the research can pick up on it.
[13:49] because you have to get like funding and do the research and conduct the studies and publish it it takes a long time so when researchers decide to figure it out it's already been there someone's noticed it for years.
[14:00] right and so now over the last couple of years world-leading researchers they're publishing on this the limitations of space retrieval and and spacing what it does do well and what it doesn't do well.
[14:11] but what is the smoothest transition
[14:14] into a more effective way of space repetition.
[14:18] it depends on how entrenched you are in the anki system.
[14:23] if like your be-all end-all is anki and you know again i'm not necessarily talking about the app i'm talking about the kind of the process you know space retrieval there's other apps that do the same thing right uh but you know this whole just like exit like heaps and heaps of flash cards space retrieval type algorithm.
[14:37] um if your whole system is based on that that's going to be very difficult to extract yourself from okay to be honest because so much of it is dependent on that.
[14:47] i would say that a good first step to take is to look at your you know existing deck of anki cards or the next time you're about to make anki cards.
[15:00] instead of straight away what you would normally do which is maybe to you know condense some notes and chuck them on empty or flash cards or whatever it is that you're attempting to do.
[15:08] instead of doing that spend a little bit of time just to try to compare some of the ideas.
[15:15] against each other and find a way that you can make it almost a little bit more like obvious what we're basically doing.
[15:21] right is.
[15:23] i mean this is like a super simplified version but it's really just that first single step that you know someone could take.
[15:28] what we're basically doing is we're saying with the sensory information coming in and when that sensory information comes into our brain we have the opportunity at that point to change the way that we think about that information.
[15:43] so that we activate a more efficient what we you know often called the encoding process.
[15:50] okay which is this blue error the encoding process and when we do that well we're able to store that information in our long-term memory.
[15:57] okay and if we can do it really well we're even able to store that information and use and apply that information at a higher level of knowledge mastery and depth you know a level of depth that most people can only reach after studying something for months or even years you can achieve after studying it for maybe even you know a couple of days if you think about.
[16:16] it in the right way you know there are certain cognitive shortcuts and there's certain pathways that you can forcibly activate that achieves this right.
[16:22] it's very complicated i'm not going to talk about it in this video.
[16:25] so we have the opportunity to use various techniques to activate more efficient encoding pathways and put in the long-term memory.
[16:33] when we are saying that we're just going to offload this onto flashcards instead we are essentially saying to ourselves this is not possible.
[16:42] what i am going to do is i am instead going to use a rote learning process of repetition and i'm going to offload that into my flashcards okay so this is my deck of cards.
[16:56] and we want to stop that decision.
[16:59] we want to be a little bit more aware of that cognitive pathway we want to actually make a decision about what it is that we think can be learned in a different form and what we have to resort to with using rote learning.
[17:12] rote learning learning through repetition is necessary for some types of information.
[17:17] and the information that it is suitable for depends on your ability to do the encoding process.
[17:23] if you're really bad at doing the encoding process and that's not because you're just an idiot but because you just never learned how to do it properly.
[17:31] which is by the way most people right a lot of people think that they're like you know like a a huge idiot because they don't know how to encode properly but it's not the case.
[17:39] like most people are not able to encode effectively because they were never ever taught partially because the research on how we can actually teach this has only been available for like the last five years.
[17:51] i just almost coincidentally happened to be like nick deep in this right at the moment when this research was coming out and i was having the experience and consolidating it really really quickly.
[18:03] so if you don't have a high level of the encoding process it's not actually possible for you to activate some of these pathways yet.
[18:13] and you can train yourself to do it better and better and better over time but right now there's going to be a
[18:18] limit to how much you can do.
[18:21] and so if that's not uh possible then we would have to resort to this rote learning.
[18:29] but if we can start detecting what types of information we are able to encode more effectively through another alternative method.
[18:37] if we can start seeing how information can be organized and consolidated and make it not require repetition if we can make it so that rote learning through flashcards is the last resort if that's the frame we come from then that just starts opening the door for other possibilities.
[18:55] and that last resort in the early stages you may need to use that last resort 90 of the time because you have no other resorts that you've created.
[19:05] but then you can invest a little bit more into practicing these alternatives and as you get better and better and more proficient at other methods of encoding you will have more results before the last resort and therefore you will be able to spend less less and less.
[19:20] and less investment into just rote learning through things like flashcards and less things through repetition and eventually a very small percentage of the information you will have to resort to using flashcards and most of the content you'll be able to find ways of learning it you know through other means and for the very very beginner what i would say is just try to take the information and find a way to think about it that makes it seem really obvious you can try to relate the information to your prior existing knowledge
[19:52] okay this is something that in the education space we often talk about as creating an analogous relationship and yes that's exactly the same analogous as when we say analogy creating an analogous relationship where we're saying hey this is kind of like this other thing that i learned or that i know about
[20:10] finding that way of understanding it finding those analogies look for that as an opportunity and if you can find that you don't need to put it on the flash card just get used to not putting it on
[20:21] a flash card you can write it down in
[20:22] some other notes if you're really
[20:23] insecure about it
[20:25] and eventually you may not even need to
[20:26] put it down in those other notes
[20:28] at some point but you can start by just
[20:30] offloading it onto something else and
[20:32] just slowly getting used to the idea of
[20:34] processing the information to a greater
[20:35] and greater depth and what will happen
[20:37] is that eventually you will have more
[20:39] and more methods and techniques through
[20:40] which you can access this not just
[20:42] analogous relationships but you'll be
[20:44] able to form more complex and advanced
[20:46] organizational structures you'll be able
[20:47] to find more ways of you know that thing
[20:49] that we often call chunking uh we'll be
[20:51] able to find more effective methods of
[20:53] condensing and compressing information
[20:55] forcing relevance and encoding it as we
[20:58] practice it and we will feel more and
[21:00] more secure about that process over time
[21:02] and not need to rely on something like
[21:04] space repetition and anki and i think
[21:06] it's very important that anyone that's
[21:07] watching this you're not trying to fix
[21:10] everything in a single go because you're
[21:11] probably not going to be able to because
[21:13] the skill hasn't been developed but it
[21:14] doesn't mean you can't develop the skill
[21:16] what it means is that you need to focus
[21:18] on what is the immediate next step that
[21:20] you can take that gets you one step
[21:22] closer because you just keep taking
[21:23] those steps and eventually you're going
[21:24] to be at where you want to be
[21:27] but if you don't start taking those
[21:28] first steps that time is going to pass
[21:30] regardless
[21:31] and three four months from now you're
[21:33] either going to be there or you're not
[21:34] going to be there and if you're not
[21:36] there you may regret not having taken
[21:38] just those first few steps which by
[21:40] themselves may not have seemed very
[21:42] big or impressive
[21:44] but they were the first steps on that
[21:46] journey and that's the most important
[21:47] thing and that's the thing that i would
[21:49] say if i okay anyone to take away from
[21:50] that is to really focus on that how is
[21:53] space repetition different from
[21:54] interleaving because a lot of people
[21:56] mistake interleaving
[21:58] with space repetition yep a lot of
[22:00] people think that interleaving
[22:03] just means like oh i'll study maths for
[22:05] 30 minutes science for 30 minutes
[22:07] english for 30 minutes instead of doing
[22:09] and then i'll repeat that three times
[22:11] instead of doing a block one hour
[22:13] formats one hour four signs for now for
[22:15] english so interleaving is actually
[22:17] quite an interesting sort of concept
[22:19] because it's not um a single sort of
[22:21] thing so often when we look at research
[22:24] on interleaving it's comparing
[22:25] interleaving to something called massed
[22:27] practice a massed practice
[22:29] like m-a-s-s-e-d just talks about just
[22:32] practicing something all in one block
[22:34] like you have a single long study
[22:35] session where you cover everything
[22:37] interleaving is talking about kind of
[22:39] breaking that up and and and kind of
[22:42] spreading that with other things in
[22:44] between
[22:46] but there's another aspect of
[22:47] interleaving um so if you look at some
[22:49] of the older research on interleaving
[22:50] what we're talking about there is not
[22:51] necessarily the idea of practicing one
[22:54] thing
[22:55] in a block i mean it is practicing one
[22:57] thing in a block but it's also the angle
[22:59] and the way in which we are approaching
[23:01] it at that time so a classic example
[23:03] that's often given is throwing a
[23:05] basketball
[23:07] uh massed practice for basketball would
[23:10] be to stay at the same spot same angle
[23:12] of approach and practice throwing your
[23:14] free
[23:15] your free throws
[23:17] okay and you practice each shot after
[23:18] shot after shot
[23:20] interleaving would be saying you're
[23:22] gonna practice this five times and
[23:24] you're gonna move one step to the left
[23:26] and practice that five times and move
[23:28] you know ten steps to the right and
[23:29] practice it five times you're gonna
[23:30] practice with someone actively trying to
[23:32] block you you're gonna practice with you
[23:34] know taking a step back you're going to
[23:36] practice you know in these different
[23:38] types of
[23:39] angles and pressures and stresses
[23:42] and so interleaving more broadly and
[23:44] especially the way that i focus on it is
[23:46] i really focus a lot more on the idea of
[23:48] of breaking up a single session not
[23:51] necessarily by time but the idea that
[23:53] we're breaking up our approach with
[23:55] multiple different angles of hitting the
[23:57] same topic so um interleaving and
[24:00] spacing go really really hand in hand
[24:02] because in one session you can approach
[24:04] it in this angle or in a couple of
[24:05] angles cognitively and in the next
[24:07] session you can approach it in a couple
[24:09] of different angles the most common very
[24:12] easy way of doing this would be like
[24:13] saying first i'm going to create a good
[24:15] structure and a frame for this and write
[24:18] some notes about a topic and then
[24:19] afterwards in my next session maybe a
[24:21] couple of days later i'm gonna do some
[24:23] practice papers
[24:25] some practice questions for it same
[24:26] content but you're approaching it in a
[24:28] different way it's a very normal way of
[24:29] interleaving that people do and people
[24:31] that do this find that's a very
[24:32] effective combo but that's just
[24:35] that's just the surface you can get even
[24:37] more effective than that right so for
[24:38] example you could say instead of just
[24:40] answering questions you make your own
[24:42] questions so that's another angle it's
[24:44] actually a different cognitive approach
[24:45] creating questions for answering
[24:46] questions you can even have a group of
[24:48] friends
[24:48] you create questions for each other and
[24:50] you answer each other's questions but
[24:52] then you don't have an answer sheet you
[24:53] can make your own answer sheet making
[24:55] your own answer sheet is in itself a
[24:58] different angle and an approach in fact
[24:59] in fact a very very effective approach
[25:02] of learning
[25:03] so there's all these different angles
[25:05] that we can actually take to cover the
[25:06] same types of information now i've just
[25:08] talked about the ones that are the
[25:08] easiest to understand but this i mean
[25:11] there's a there's a ton i mean um those
[25:13] of you that are already on my course you
[25:14] know i've got the interleaving table if
[25:16] you are my course make sure to look that
[25:17] up um in the dashboard you can find the
[25:19] interleaving table where there's this
[25:21] huge list of all the different ways that
[25:23] you cover a certain type of of topic for
[25:27] different subjects
[25:28] different contexts different time
[25:29] availabilities there's so many ways that
[25:31] you can hit information where it would
[25:33] give you a really great
[25:35] learning per
[25:37] time like one hour spent doing that
[25:40] gives you so much benefit it covers so
[25:42] many gaps and prepares you for
[25:44] assessments and exams or even your boss
[25:47] grilling you at work it protects you
[25:49] against more of those rather than
[25:51] essentially what the worst thing that
[25:52] you can do is
[25:55] the worst thing that you can do while
[25:56] doing space retrieval which is to do the
[25:58] same method every time you just re-read
[26:01] your notes again and again and again
[26:03] just rewrite your notes and maybe
[26:04] paraphrase it a few times that's not
[26:06] really doing anything cognitively you're
[26:08] reaching the saturation of what gain you
[26:10] can get from that probably the first
[26:11] time you're doing it
[26:12] and then every time you do it afterwards
[26:14] it's just a waste of time
[26:15] because yes it may give you one or two
[26:17] percent advantage but compared to the
[26:19] possible 10 to 20 advantage that gets
[26:21] you doing something else
[26:23] that's not worth it the opportunity cost
[26:25] what you're losing out on by doing that
[26:27] cool
[26:28] right
[26:29] so with this in mind
[26:31] um
[26:33] now that we know that we can actually
[26:34] incorporate interleaving
[26:36] what's your opinion on the
[26:38] spacing and the intervals between
[26:41] each repetition is it really so
[26:43] important to fine-tune your settings
[26:45] right so um what we're talking about now
[26:48] is this idea of um
[26:50] you know spacing intervals and there's
[26:53] uh
[26:54] this sort of concept on top of space
[26:56] retrieval which is called expanding gaps
[26:58] based retrieval which just i mean it's
[27:00] kind of self-explanatory right the gap
[27:03] between each interval is expanding so
[27:05] for example you do it after one day then
[27:07] you do it after like two days and you do
[27:09] after like five days and whatever like
[27:10] anki and things like that have that
[27:11] built into it and a few more things on
[27:14] top of that algorithm
[27:16] um okay so the research on this in
[27:18] summary is like kind of inconclusive
[27:21] but suggests that having longer gaps and
[27:25] expanding that gap is a little bit more
[27:27] beneficial
[27:29] but
[27:29] you don't have to get it down like super
[27:32] razor sharp
[27:33] but okay and this is really important
[27:35] here
[27:36] is that it depends a lot on how well you
[27:39] encoded it in the first place
[27:41] so
[27:42] if we think about the forgetting curve
[27:44] right for a second here our great friend
[27:46] ipping house created this forgetting
[27:48] curve that said that the first time we
[27:50] look at information we're going to
[27:51] forget it very quickly if we repeat it
[27:52] again we're going to forget it much more
[27:54] slowly and when we repeat it again we're
[27:56] going to forget it you know even slower
[27:57] than that right it's a very simple
[27:59] concept to understand we intuitively
[28:00] understand it this is what space
[28:01] repetition is based on
[28:02] so
[28:03] the reason that we have the expanding
[28:05] gap is because it doesn't really make
[28:07] sense to have you know one here and then
[28:10] one here so let's say that by this point
[28:12] we have we're at 10
[28:13] okay so we've forgotten 90 of everything
[28:15] that we learned which is by the way kind
[28:16] of bad and also it doesn't have to be
[28:18] that way
[28:18] but let's assume that that's just what's
[28:20] happening we're getting 90 of what we
[28:21] learned after let's say that the gap
[28:23] here is two days
[28:26] okay now research typically suggests
[28:28] that after one week you forget 50 to 60
[28:31] overall okay
[28:33] but obviously it depends on a lot of
[28:34] things
[28:36] uh so if you are then doing it again
[28:39] after two days
[28:41] okay the amount that you may have
[28:42] forgotten at that point maybe
[28:45] you know here so it's like 50
[28:47] so it may not actually be
[28:50] as time efficient to do it after like
[28:53] every two days
[28:54] because
[28:56] uh
[28:57] when you leave it for a little bit
[28:58] longer when the gap for retrieval is a
[29:00] little bit longer it
[29:02] allows you to
[29:04] kind of replicate the more realistic
[29:07] needs of your retrieval so for example
[29:09] if you've got an exam in like a week
[29:10] from now unless you plan on repeating
[29:12] the same material like every two days
[29:14] between now and the exam
[29:16] um
[29:17] you know you may not ever really test
[29:19] your ability to retrieve it after you
[29:21] leave it for a whole week so you kind of
[29:23] want to know how much are you forgetting
[29:25] after a week after two weeks after a
[29:27] month so there's a strategic advantage
[29:30] there and also you forget different
[29:32] things at different times and that also
[29:34] gives you an indication of the different
[29:35] weaknesses that you have
[29:37] however
[29:39] if you have a low level of encoding
[29:42] and you're forgetting things very
[29:43] quickly and i'll say that in this
[29:45] example if you're getting 90 of what you
[29:47] learn after two days that's a very bad
[29:48] level of encoding then you do not have
[29:51] the option
[29:52] of playing around with the expanding
[29:54] interval very much
[29:56] because every single day you are
[29:58] forgetting so much
[30:00] that if you don't get it on to if you
[30:02] don't do your retrieval today
[30:03] and you leave it tomorrow
[30:06] then you may have forgotten so much more
[30:08] in that time that you now have to do so
[30:10] much tomorrow that you literally do not
[30:12] have time and this is the idea of like
[30:13] flash card overwhelm you like miss two
[30:16] or three days when the cards are due and
[30:18] you do them again later and now suddenly
[30:20] you have like 600 additional cards you
[30:21] need to do and you're not able to
[30:23] complete it because you physically do
[30:24] not have time or you know it's very it's
[30:27] very like aggressive in terms of the
[30:28] timing and the intervals whereas if
[30:30] you're able to encode it better to begin
[30:32] with you just fundamentally forget
[30:34] things much slower and so there's no
[30:36] need to even do a retrieval session here
[30:38] you could do one over here and at that
[30:40] point you still remember let's say 60 of
[30:42] it
[30:43] right so it means that when you encode
[30:45] things better the first time around you
[30:47] can afford to have a much greater delay
[30:50] between your retrieval sessions instead
[30:52] of having to do it every single day or
[30:54] every second day you can now afford to
[30:56] do it once after the first couple days
[30:58] or the first three days whatever and you
[31:01] can do another one roughly a week later
[31:04] give or take a few days and you can do
[31:06] another one roughly a few weeks later
[31:09] give or take a week or two and it's not
[31:11] really gonna matter the amount of
[31:12] knowledge decay that you're facing is
[31:14] only like five or ten percent difference
[31:16] it's not going to be like 50 or 60
[31:18] different
[31:19] which is what would be the case if you
[31:20] had poor encoding to begin with right so
[31:23] it's kind of like a nuanced point there
[31:25] but the other thing is also it's not
[31:27] time efficient to not have expanding
[31:29] gaps based retrieval regardless no
[31:31] matter how good or bad your encoding is
[31:33] having fixed intervals between your
[31:36] spacing attempts is never going to be
[31:38] time efficient because of the fact that
[31:40] well most cases
[31:41] you're always learning new information
[31:43] so there's always more stuff that you're
[31:45] going to need to retrieve on
[31:46] so if you're doing something and if if
[31:49] you're doing a fixed retrieval every
[31:51] single however long as time goes on the
[31:54] amount you need to cover just grows and
[31:56] grows and grows and grows
[31:58] right and so
[32:00] uh that may actually be unnecessary
[32:03] if you were to skip one and you were to
[32:05] do it a little bit later
[32:07] you may have consolidated enough on that
[32:09] previous attempt that you don't actually
[32:11] need to do it two days later you may be
[32:13] able to do it only a week later
[32:15] and so what that means is that frees up
[32:17] additional time for you to invest in
[32:19] doing better encoding the first time
[32:20] around because you're now no longer
[32:22] burdened by the need to have fixed
[32:24] retrieval every single you know like day
[32:26] or every couple of days
[32:28] so it's not time efficient to spend
[32:31] heaps of time on just fixed interval
[32:33] space retrieval even if you're
[32:34] forgetting a lot it's better to keep the
[32:36] intervals expanded because the worst
[32:38] case scenario is that you have a lot of
[32:40] space retrieval that you need to do your
[32:42] intervals are very short and therefore
[32:44] you're never really encoding it properly
[32:46] the first time around which means you're
[32:48] always consuming more information than
[32:49] you're consolidating which means that
[32:50] the amount that you need to cover in
[32:52] each retrieval session only ever grows
[32:56] the fundamental problem is that the
[32:57] encoding is going to be done wrong
[33:00] or not good enough
[33:02] and therefore as a result
[33:05] you're going to forget more
[33:06] and if you're trying to combat that with
[33:08] just more and more frequent spacing that
[33:11] actually takes away more and more time
[33:13] from you to be able to fix the
[33:14] fundamental issue which is how you're
[33:16] encoding in the first place
[33:18] so there's really a lot of things here
[33:20] so in summary basically
[33:22] have expanding gap space retrieval
[33:25] to start with
[33:27] but the timing of the spacing number one
[33:30] doesn't really matter
[33:32] but the room for flexibility of that
[33:34] timing is directly proportional to how
[33:37] good you were at encoding it in the
[33:39] first place and again i'm not able to
[33:41] get into all of that
[33:43] in like a single youtube video or even
[33:45] really on youtube as a platform in
[33:48] general because it is just so specific
[33:50] and deep and sequential it really is an
[33:52] entire cognitive retraining schedule
[33:53] that has to be followed
[33:55] um so it is a little bit more
[33:56] complicated so i can't go into that
[33:57] right now
[33:59] but i have lots of other videos where i
[34:00] talk about that and again if you're
[34:02] really keen on jumping through you can
[34:03] just join the program properly and just
[34:05] go through it from start to finish