Hi Aaron, great question. Let’s get the obvious out of the way: For people who are still in university, in study-intensive subjects, it’s a great advantage to use a Spaced Repetition System like SuperMemo. To me it feels empowering not to have to worry about forgetting. It’s a common experience to feel very frustrated to study so much for an exam, only to forget most of it afterwards. This doesn’t happen to me anymore, because I just know the algorithm will take care and as long as I do my daily repitions, my knowledge will get transfered into long-term memory.
Another obvious use case is learning languages. An SRS can greatly help you to learn a language much faster and this seems to be the most common usage.
One not so obvious advantage is about creativity/innovation. In my understanding, creativity has a lot to do with connecting ideas from different fields, ones you wouldn’t initially notice as being related to each other. Imagine you study two different domains, e.g. Biology and Economics. Actively remembering important information from both of those might result in two at first glance disparate ideas appearing in your mind in close succession. This is what leads to creativity, you making the connection between those. This is less likely to happen if you store your information mostly externally, e.g. in Evernote.
To answer your question more straightforward: So far, I have found it most useful for studying medicine in University and learning French/Spanish.
Hi Aaron, great question.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: For people who are still in university, in study-intensive subjects, it’s a great advantage to use a Spaced Repetition System like SuperMemo. To me it feels empowering not to have to worry about forgetting. It’s a common experience to feel very frustrated to study so much for an exam, only to forget most of it afterwards. This doesn’t happen to me anymore, because I just know the algorithm will take care and as long as I do my daily repitions, my knowledge will get transfered into long-term memory.
Another obvious use case is learning languages. An SRS can greatly help you to learn a language much faster and this seems to be the most common usage.
One not so obvious advantage is about creativity/innovation. In my understanding, creativity has a lot to do with connecting ideas from different fields, ones you wouldn’t initially notice as being related to each other. Imagine you study two different domains, e.g. Biology and Economics. Actively remembering important information from both of those might result in two at first glance disparate ideas appearing in your mind in close succession. This is what leads to creativity, you making the connection between those. This is less likely to happen if you store your information mostly externally, e.g. in Evernote.
To answer your question more straightforward: So far, I have found it most useful for studying medicine in University and learning French/Spanish.