Hey, you sound like me! I’ve been using SuperMemo daily for more than a decade, and I’ve noticed something similar. Processing information and thinking in terms of “how do I make a flashcard that covers this fact?” has been helpful at both making flashcards but also just general understanding stuff. Taking notes in my Notes app in the form of questions and answers has been very useful.
I agree completely. Creating good cards, or thinking about how to cover a topic/fact with cards well forces you to break it down into very small pieces. Otherwise the cards get bulky, aren't precise enough and are generally annoying.
Breaking it down into such small bits makes it immediately obvious if I haven't understood something, because I either wouldn't understand the answer for one of my own cards, or wouldn't even know how to create an answer.
If done properly, it's much harder for something to "slip through the cracks" so to speak.
When I first started properly integrating this into my day to day life I also noticed that I was interested in remembering many more mundane things than I would've expected. Simple stuff that I really didn't have a place to write them down for, but that also weren't really important enough to take time out of my day to actively memorize it. There's a place for that now. It's been really interesting to see how broadly applicable spaced repetition is and that it's not just useful to learn for college exams.
Yes, exactly! I frequently notice during my day-to-day life, I will ask myself simple questions like “what is the state department?” and then I Google the question, read the answer, and create a question and answer pair in as simple language as possible and then store that in my notes app. I no longer feel embarrassed, but I’m actually excited to find these kinds of gaps in my knowledge. I also feel way less pressure to act like I understand something that I don’t out of fear of looking stupid. It has been such an overall net positive for my brain.
