Practice sessions

Spaced repetition practice vs. ad hoc practice

Spaced repetition practice

SmarterHumans flashcards are spaced repetition flashcards scheduled for practice by our algorithm. This algorithm adapts to your past performance, ensuring you practice when you're close to forgetting. The result is a reduced workload required to retain your knowledge and enhance the effectiveness of your retrieval practice by introducing a ‘desirable difficulty, a concept recognized by leading psychologists in learning and memory.

To enter a daily practice session scheduled by the spaced repetition algorithm, click the large PRACTICE button on the sidebar (or on the footer if you are on a small screen device.)

The only way to practice the flashcards scheduled for practice by the spaced repetition algorithm is to click the PRACTICE button in the sidebar on desktops (and the footer on smaller screens.)

When you enter into a practice session, you will be presented with the session's flashcards, one at a time, in randomized order for that session, but with priority given to flashcards that are part of an Exam Mode that you created to ensure that you're prepared for an upcoming exam.

Ad hoc practice

You can practice any of your flashcards whenever you want

We call "whenever you want practice” an ad hoc practice session. Wherever you see a rocket icon in the user interface, clicking it will take you into practice for a subset of your flashcards.

Here are some places where you'll see the rocket icon

• At the top of your open files and videos in the library. Clicking the rocket will take you into practice for the flashcards that are deep-linked to text and regions of interest in that file or time code in a video.

• When you hover over a tag in the tags list, if there are flashcards linked to that tag, you'll see a rocket icon, and clicking it will take you to a practice session for the flashcards that possess that tag.

• When you select one or more flashcards in the list in the CARDS section of the app, click the practice bulk action button to take your selection into an ad hoc practice.

During an ad hoc regular practice, your performance is tracked by the spaced repetition algorithm, and depending on how " premature" your practice of a "not yet due for practice" flashcard is, the next scheduled date for practicing that flashcard may or may not be changed.

Ad Hoc practice sessions come in two flavors

Unlike spaced repetition scheduled practice sessions, which take you straight into the practice session, ad hoc practice first asks you to choose between a regular practice (like a spaced repetition session) and a training mode practice session.

The spaced repetition algorithm doesn't track training mode practice and does not affect the next due date for scheduled practice.

Use a few cycles of training mode to "burn"" a new flashcard into memory before its first spaced repetition, and always scheduled the day after you create it. Training mode is also helpful for extra work with flashcards you coninue to struggle with.

During training mode, you can repeatedly cycle through a set of flashcards, doing retrieval practice. You still give a star rating each time, but the star rating only affects the order of presentation of the flashcards in the next cycle. When you feel confident about your recall-ability for a given flashcard, click the Got it! Button, and it won't appear again in subsequent cycles of that session.

Anatomy of the front of a flashcard in practice

1. This is the first of six flashcards in this session.
2. You can exit the session at any time. The keyboard shortcut is esc or x.
3. The question.
4. Your response. This is optional. If you save a response, you can view it in the response log.
5. If you want, you can record audio of your response.
6. Skip practicing memory retrieval for this flashcard. It will remain in the PRACTICE button until you practice it.
7. See the answer (back of the flashcard). Ensure you do your best to retrieve the answer from memory OR determine that you can't recall before you turn it over. If you don't do this, you may conclude upon seeing the answer, "Oh yeah. I knew that," you will likely be fooling yourself into believing you knew the answer when what you were experiencing was just fluency (familiarity). You must retrieve the answer from memory to prove that you know the answer. Even failure to retrieve the answer improves future attempts at recall.
8. Flag the flashcard if you want to make some changes to it later.

Anatomy of the back of a flashcard during practice

1. The question.
2. Your response. Your answer before before you turned it over. This will be stored in the response log for the flashcard.
3. The answer
4. Skip button. You can skip recording a star rating, and the flashcard will remain in the PRACTICE button on the sidebar/footer until you practice and issue a star rating.
5. Issue a star rating. This will feed into the spaced repetition algorithm's calculation for the next practice date. When you hover over a star, you can see the number of days until the next scheduled practice session if you choose that rating. A 1-star indicates that you totally forgot. Five stars means that you had easy recall. Make a habit of using the entire range of ratings to increase the power of the algorithm and decrease your retrieval practice workload more effectively.
6. Edit. The flashcard edit form will appear. Great for fixing errors on the fly or adding more content.
7. Flag the flashcard if you want to edit it later or perform some other task. You can find flagged flashcards by clicking Flagged flashcards in the tags panel in the CARDS section.
8. Source button/link. Click to see the source where you learned the content of the flashcard. This is a deep link to the exact location in the source if you created the flashcard in the library using the webclipper browser extension.

The value of reviewing the source when you forget the answer is immense. This brings you back to the context where you learned it. By retracing your steps, you can significantly repair your recallability of the knowledge.

In this case, the source is a Wikipedia page that was sent into the library via the webclipper or by entering the URL to import it. Clicking the source button opened the deep-linked source at the relevant location.

Via the webclipper extension:

• If the source had been a video on YouTube, Coursera, or Udemy, The footage would have opened in a new browser tab at the deep-linked time code.
• If the source had been a webpage, that page would have opened in a new browser tab and, after a couple of seconds, would have scrolled to bring the highlighted text or snipped region of interest into view.
• UPDATE (January 2025): Unfortunately, Amazon has broken the ability of apps to link back to the source highlight in the Kindle Desktop App. If they fix this, we will reinstate this feature in SmarterHumans. If the source were a Kindle highlight, the Kindle desktop app (KDA) would have launched and the source book would have opened at the page with the highlight. NOTE: This functionality only works with KDA versions prior to 1.40 on Macs. There are websites where you can download 1.39 versions of the KDA, but you have to assess the risk of malware NOTE: You should quit the KDA after reviewing this source-linked content. This is because if the next source you click is from the same book, the KDA won't be available on the relevant page. This is due to a flaw in the KDA software, which we cannot control.

Anatomy or the front of a redaction flashcard in practice

The visible border tells you this is the current redaction you'll unmask if you click the reveal first redaction button. Your mission is to recall what's behind it.

Did you get the first one right? Here's the next redaction.

After you click to reveal the last redaction, you'll be taken to the back of the flashcard. After that, the workflow will be like ordinary QA flashcards.

Practice settings

Practice settings

Workflows in the LIBRARY section

• Practice sessions
• Spaced repetition practice vs. ad hoc practice
• Spaced repetition practice
• Ad hoc practice
• You can practice any of your flashcards whenever you want
• Ad Hoc practice sessions come in two flavors
• The spaced repetition algorithm doesn't track training mode practice and does not affect the next due date for scheduled practice.
• Anatomy of the front of a flashcard in practice
• Anatomy of the back of a flashcard during practice
• Anatomy or the front of a redaction flashcard in practice
• Practice settings
• Workflows in the LIBRARY section
• workflow 1
• workflow 1
• workflow 1