What are you using Supermemo for?

[Jon]

For me, I am using it for everything!

Topics include:
- Health
- Programming
- Non-fiction books
- Evolutionary psychology
- Wisdom
- Exercise and diet
- Work specific stuff
- Rational thinking
- Social and relationships

What are you using it for? Are you a student and need to pass exams? Or perhaps retraining for work. Whatever it is, let us know here!

 

[rajlego]

I've been using it to go through:
-the incremental reading manual
-good sleep, good learning, good life
-Input Hypothesis
and a couple of other things but mainly those

 

[Jon]

Hey rajlego, welcome to the forums. What do you mean by "Input Hypothesis"?

You can see the thread on my Knowledge Tree to get an idea of what I've got included: https://themindtavern.com/community/threads/share-your-knowledge-tree.14/

 

[rajlego]

On this blog I saw input hypothesis mention so I imported it to SM and I've been slowly going through it. Wow is your knowledge tree organized! This is mine but you won't glean much from it since I didn't organize it at all. Japanese has max 4 cards on Japanese, it's likely composed of a bunch of articles I imported but just forgot to sort somewhere. Any advice on sorting? I'm not good with organizing anything in general and whenever I consider reorganizing my knowledge tree I don't know where to start or how to order it. Also, I noticed you have a farnam street collection. I've imported a bit from both them and James Clear on mental models. Any recs from either them or just in general? It looks like for your Supermemo section you didn't import too much but for the IR guide but I've got around 878 elements from it that helped me learn how to use IR well. How did you learn how to use incremental reading without the guide? I've been introducing supermemo to a lot of people recently and I just tell them to do the big test from here because I don't know well how else to show them.

 

[Jon]

I'm happy to provide suggestions. May I ask you to post your Knowledge Tree under the Knowledge Tree thread please? I want people to see a collection of them there. We are all at different stages and so I think it helps others see how these things mature.

 

[rajlego]

Sure, just did

 

[Jon]

Thanks for doing that.

Well, here are my suggestions.

1. Under your Language folder, put Japanese as a subfolder.

2. Create a folder called Computers. Under that put Programming.

3. Under Learning, put To learn, In progress, Done. Depends on what you have there really.

4. Create a folder called Supermemo. Under that put IR Topics, Misc.

5. Create a folder called Web Imports. Put all your imports under there as folders. Drag and drop.

Does that give you any ideas?

 

[rajlego]

That is pretty helpful, gonna import it as a topic. Number 3 seems a bit tough though, probably because learning is too vague a folder to organize things with well, everything fits under it. To me, it doesn't seem that useful to be able to locate specific sections because I can just search but I think what would be more useful would be if I have concepts organized better. I was reading about the benefits of adding context and if I can have each subtopic have its own template maybe it would be useful for quickly getting my mind into knowing the area I'm looking at.

 

[Jon]

Since you are relatively new to Supermemo, I would recommend trying to stick to one template for a while, if you can. Things can get a bit messy otherwise, from others experience.

I was thinking perhaps you were using the Learning folder for processing. Perhaps a better name would be Misc. That can be a catch all.

 

[rajlego]

I saw some long-time SM user on the discord mention that they don't spend any time with knowledge tree anymore because it takes away from learning time but I guess there's the benefit of hierarchy in being able to clearly see what learning material you have and where you skew. People have asked me what I'm studying and I struggle to answer because it's hard to tell except based on whatever I see today.

 

[Jon]

You may be referring to LittleFish there. There are other users who like to keep things tidy, like myself.

 

[rajlego]

Yeah, misc would make more sense, I'll try that instead.

 

[rajlego]

You may be referring to LittleFish there. There are other users who like to keep things tidy, like myself.

Yup, LittleFish

That's true, templates are a bit harder than I expected. After seeing this blog, I wanted to make a template for keyboard shortcut questions but it didn't really work how I wanted.

 

[Jon]

My advice is to run with the basics for a couple of months until you have that done in your bones. Then, explore functionality here and there. i.e. don't run before you can walk.

 

[rajlego]

I get this feeling often that in the moment it feels hard to picture getting significantly better than I am now, I think I had the same feeling when I started around 3 months ago but it's a bit exciting to think about how much better I'll be at SM 3 months from now in ways I can't picture yet.

 

[Jon]

My experience is that after you master a few basics, you don't even think about them anymore. Remember the 80:20 rule. A few very basic things are used nearly all the time.

 

[rajlego]

Yeah that's true. When I first started I got super frustrated using SM but now it's just natural. A lot of people want a modern UI but I don't know if the intuitiveness I get from using SM now could be matched.

 

[Jon]

Have you also used Anki?

 

[Bee]

This weekend, I am kickstarting my Anki use. It seems I will have to make my own deck for BSL, but making the deck is the first step in rooting it into my memory.

Send chocolate.

 

[Jon]

Using Anki can be good for learning stuff when you change jobs too. Crank in there the essential bits and bobs you need to know. Gets you up to speed super-quick.