Comment by vjk800

I'll give a few examples.

* Learning biology, memorize terms like "anabolic reaction" or "reverse transcriptase"

* Learning algebra, memorize major groups like S_n or GL_n

* Learning statistics, memorize the major probability distributions, their means, and standard deviations

* Preparing for math contests, remember things like "Chinese remainder theorem"

That's a tiny part of learning, but it dramatically accelerates the other parts. At that point, when you're working through texts, you'll understand what you're reading without looking things up or thinking about it. And when you're engage in complex problemsolving, you'll have the knowledge ready.

Do this either on or before the first (surface learning) pass, and once they're memorized, use them in more advanced contexts (e.g. reading research papers, teaching, complex problemsolving, etc.).

All this stuff interconnects, and SR gives a fast, cheap way to start building out the simpler parts of the knowledge network.

I use Anki more as a serendipity engine than for memorization: Whenever[1] I have an interesting observation or thought, I'll write a couple of sentences about it and file two copies: One in Obsidian, with links to any adjacent/relevant notes (if any), and another in Anki as a Close deletion.

Anki is set up with a long review cycle (1 day, 1 week, 1 month, then automated) and I sit down to do my reviews about once a week. In that process, I usually end up having new ideas to make notes about based on either the randomized order the notes show up in or spotting a connection between the review note and something I've been working on lately.

[1] In practice, I let many/most of these go unrecorded - I probably average about one new note per day, but in bursts.

I'm in a similar position of never having found a use where memorising lots of facts would be useful. The main use I keep seeing is vocabulary building when learning a language. I'm sure people are using the system for learning other stuff too though?

Seeing this did make me wonder how I might be able to get better at memorising important parts of iso/iec standards at work, but I can't see how that maps to flashcards