Spaced repetition the best
way to learn anything fast. Backed by science, spaced
repetition was my super power during medical school. It allowed me to learn so fast that I had plenty of time for other things like starting a YouTube
channel, producing music and building RemNotes
all during my training. The science behind spaced repetition can be quite complicated, but honestly you can watch any other video on the internet for that. But in this video, I'm cutting straight
through all that fluff and I'm giving you real life applications. 11 ways to use spaced
repetition step-by-step to get better grades. In a nutshell spaced repetition is simply spacing out your studies. It's the opposite of cramming, which means that all the benefits
are also at the opposite. At the end of this video, I'll talk about the most common mistakes that students make when
using spaced repetition so that you can avoid it. But for now, let's get into the list. (electronic whoosh) So I see spaced repetition
in three different tiers. The higher you go, the
more benefits you get. But also the more complex it is to apply. Tier one is the basics. You don't get the full effects, but it's easy to get started and you can start right after this video. (electronic whoosh) So the first way to use spaced repetition is delayed review. And this is based on the
science of memory decay. When you first learn something, give it some time to marinate, allow yourself to actually
forget some of the material. That way, the next time you review it, you'll struggle a bit more, but retention will be way higher, more effort equals more retention. So here's an example of what you could do with your class schedule. After you go to your first math lecture, just let the materials
sit and do something else. Like maybe preview the history of lecture for tomorrow's history class. Then tomorrow you can
go to history lecture, but after that, leave history alone. Now that some time has passed
since you've seen math, you can go back and do say the
math homework or math review. Then maybe you can preview science and then you can do the history homework, and then back to science and then back to math
again and so on and so on. You're delaying your review allowing for some space to
happen between repetitions. (electronic whoosh) The second method here is
interleaving your topics. So it's kinda like the first method where you're spacing your
subjects across multiple days. This method spaces your subjects across these single study day. So let's say you plan to
study three chapters today, instead of studying in blocks as in only starting
chapter one in the morning, only studying chapter two in the afternoon and only studying chapter
three in the evening, you can try breaking up the
blocks and interleaving them. (bird chirps) So for example, we can study chapter one in the morning, afternoon, and evening. With block study, your brain can completely
forget about chapter one after the morning but with interleaving, your brain is forced to hold
on to chapter one material, even while studying for
chapters two and three. And this allows you to make connections between all the chapters. So the next time you plan
a study for an entire day, like cramming for a test,
try out this method. You're basically applying
spacing to your cramming. (electronic whoosh) So the next method is end of day review. According to the science of memory, we tend to forget more than half of what we learned within a day. So a good time to review
newly learned material is to do a refresher
at the end of the day. If you watched my other video about 12 ways to use Active recall, then this is a great time
to run through the questions that you wrote in class. It's okay if you can't
remember everything, you can always review it
at a later repetition, but the things you can recall will be better ingrained in your memory. (electronic whoosh) Let's move on to the next tier. In tier two spacing,
you're adding the idea that each repetition should be
done in increasing intervals. The reason here is because again, it mimics the science of memory decay. (electronic whoosh) An easy way to demonstrate
this is the shoe box method. Also known as the Leitner system. The way it works is that
you have four or five boxes, items in box one is studied every day. Box two is studied every other day. And so on as you see here. Box five is retired, meaning that you already know
all the material well enough, and you can just quickly review
it right before the test. So to start place your
study topics into box one. A lot of people use flashcards, but you can put whatever you like, past papers, problem sets, whatever. Every time you get a topic
right, you move it up one box. Every time you get a topic wrong, you move it all the way back to box one. This ensures that you studied
your weaker topics more often, and this method is highly customizable. For example, you can come
up with your own intervals or you can move your wrong
topics back just one box, instead of all the way
back to the beginning for a less punishing schedule. (electronic whoosh) The next method is using a Kanban board. You can think of it similar
to the shoe box method, but done on your electronic device rather than with physical cards. The columns will act as the boxes. And after you review an item, you can move it along to the
next box column accordingly. There are a number apps
that enable you to do this. Some free ones that come to
mind are Trello and Notion. (electronic whoosh) The next method is to
use a study timetable, also known as a prospective
revision time table. The idea is that you're
scheduling your repetitions ahead of time in your calendar. So you have the dates in the first column, and then you can fill
in your study topics. If you want to be more detailed, you can even put time in the first column. A common spacing interval
is to double the days. So for example, if you're
studying chapter one on this day, then the next time you'll study it is two days later, then four days later, then eight, then 16 and so on. Or if you wanna get really fancy, you can try using the Fibonacci Sequence. There's another method for timetables, and that would be the
retrospective revision timetable. It's basically the reverse. Instead of having the
dates in the first column, you put the study topic
in the first column. And every time you review a topic, you rank it based on how well you knew it. So let's say that I studied
chapter one on January 1st, and I felt like I knew it well, I'd highlight it in green. For me, yellow is medium and then red means I
don't know it very well. So unlike the other timetable, for this one we don't plan out
the schedule ahead of time. We just choose what we
wanna study that day based on which topics are the weakest or on which topics we
haven't studied in a while. You just keep studying everyday until all your topics turn
green as you approach your exam. The obvious advantage
of this method is that you're studying based on your
strengths and your weaknesses. (electronic whoosh) The next method takes the
idea of retrospective revision and applies it not just
to your study topics, but to individual
concepts within the topic. For example, instead of deciding to study for the topic of pharmacology, I'm zooming in and
studying individual facts from that chapter. This method works well using
an outline or note-taking app, because you can go down
your list of concepts and you can highlight the questions based on how well you know them, or you can use emojis if you wanted to. If you're using a note taking app with a tagging feature
like RemNote, for example, instead of highlighting,
you can tag the concept. This way, you can later
do a quick focus review on your weaknesses right before your test, by choosing to study specific tags. (electronic whoosh) So let's move on to tier three. These next methods I'm about to share will give you maximum
spaced repetition benefits. So in tier two, the
intervals are increasing, but the optimal spacing is having the intervals adjust to you. Your understanding of
topics can fluctuate, so the intervals for specific topics can get longer or shorter based on how well you know that topic. And this can get extremely complicated, but luckily we have Spaced
Repetition Algorithms. Think of it like the YouTube algorithm. It recommends videos that
it thinks you will enjoy based on your personal watch history. Well, in the same way,
Spaced Repetition Algorithms will recommend specific
topics for you to study based on your personal
mastery of those topics at that moment in time. So this next method is use an app with built in spaced
repetition algorithms. Some of the old school ones
are SuperMemo and Anki, but nowadays are plenty of other options with all sorts of
aesthetics and gamification. (electronic whoosh) The next method is
custom spaced repetition within a note-taking app. So there has been a recent trend of people trying to build
spaced repetition algorithms directly into a note-taking app, like Notion or Rome Research. I admire the creativity
of these DIY algorithms, but main downside here is that it requires some form of plugin
or add on or custom coding that you have to do yourself. Which can make it very complicated, if you don't know what you're doing. Personally, I think it's a lot of work and hassle to go through, just achieve makeshift spaced repetition. I mean, you can pack on as
much muscle as you want. A Diglett is still just a Diglett. (electronic whoosh) Which takes us to the last method and in my biased opinion, the best way to implement
spaced repetition. And that is by using RemNote. It's currently the only
note taking app out there that has spaced repetition algorithms built into the core product itself. No plugins, no coding, it's just seamless. We've built our own RemNote algorithm, but you can also switch to
the traditional Anki algorithm or customize your own
based on your preferences, Maddie and I have been
using spaced repetition throughout medical school and our careers, so with our awesome team,
we've optimized RemNote through years of personal experience. RemNote does something that no
other note taking app can do. It automatically generates
spaced repetition flashcards from the notes that you take, so it completely removes
the time intensive step of transferring your notes to flashcards. Just imagine if Anki and Notion had a baby and that baby got a PhD in productivity. And I say productivity
because there are a ton of other features built into RemNote that save you time during your studies. As I mentioned before, achieving tier three of spaced repetition can get pretty complicated, but I firmly believe that everyone should be using spaced
repetition to learn. And RemNote is our way of making this technology
accessible to everyone. Which is why RemNote, will always be free
for you to start using. (electronic whoosh) Now, let's talk about the biggest mistake that students make when
using spaced repetition. And that is you gotta
combine spaced repetition with Active recall. So if you're using spaced
repetition to space out, how many times you reread your notes or rewatch your lectures,
then you're missing the point. When it comes to studying,
Active recall is what you do and spaced repetition is how you do it. They go hand in hand
like sword and shield. Which means the best study strategies are some combination of
methods in this video and methods mentioned in our
previous Active recall video. Whether it's combining
retrospective timetables with practice problems or the shoe box method with mind maps, or spaced repetition
algorithms with flashcards, you wanna mix and match based on what type of subject
you're trying to study for. So for a refresher, check
out 12 different ways to use Active recall, and you can watch it right here. (upbeat music)