Comment by btilly
2 months ago
I think that the real power of spaced repetition is not in flashcard applications like this. It is in behavior modification.
Let's take a real example to show how this works.
August 19, 2025. My wife called me in to help her decide what to do about a dentist that she thought was ripping her off. A couple of quick suggestions later, and she went to being mad at me about not having heard the problem through before trying to fix it badly. As soon as she was mad, I immediately connected with how stupid what I did was, and that this never goes well. But, of course, it was now too late.
Not a mistake I was going to make for a while. But, given my history, a mistake I was bound to make again.
I changed that. This time I stuck this into my spaced repetition system. Each time the prompt comes up, I remember that scene, holding in mind how it important it is to emotionally engage, not offer quick suggestions, and be sure to listen to the full problem in detail. It takes me less than 30 seconds. Reviewing this prompt, for my whole lifetime, will take less than 15 minutes of work. Just typing this up this time takes more work than I'll spend on it in the next several years.
This mistake hasn't happened since. Not once. And I believe it won't again in my life.
I have literally changed dozens of such behaviors. My wife says that it is like there is a whole new me. She can't believe the transformation.
All it took is looking at spaced repetition as general purpose structured reinforcement, and not as just a way to study flashcards.
I love this example because the correct, wise approach is so alien to my mind that I do not know how to respond to such situations. I am a professional problem solver, you described a problem, yet you do not want it solved? Just talk about it being annoying, like an immutable facet of the universe? Should I retort about my grievances with gravity making roof repairs a bear?
> I am a professional problem solver, you described a problem, yet you do not want it solved?
This will be hard for you to believe, but I will easily wager good money that at times you yourself behave this way. You only become aware of it after both below are satisfied:
1. You've encountered someone as annoying as yourself :-)
2. You learn a bit more about the dynamics of conversations.
If there's any time someone got mad at you and said "You just want to complain and not fix the problem!" chances are this dynamic was in play. Or "I've given you so many suggestions but you don't want to fix the problem and just complain!"
Everyone acts that way to some extent. Some more than others.
Here's a typical scenario (common amongst spouses, but even amongst friends). You're annoyed/down due to problem X. Your friend sees you that way and inquires why you're down. You tell them, and they spend all their time giving you suggestions. But you never asked for suggestions!
It's not a big leap to go from there to someone simply telling you their problem because they want to get it out of their system.
Some books I've read that made it easier to understand all of this:
- Difficult Conversations
- Nonviolent Communication[1]
- Crucial Conversations
All of these will emphasize the role emotions play in dialogue. And when you read them, chances are very high you'll find yourself in them (i.e. they will give examples that you can relate to - on both sides of the conversation).
Once I read these, many, many "poor" conversations from my life earlier suddenly made sense to me. One nice outcome was learning that even though at times people were upset at me, it wasn't always "my fault". I had always taken for granted that because I didn't spend much time playing social games, that my social skills were poor and likely I did something wrong. Reading these made it clear how often the dysfunction was on the other side, and having good/poor conversations is not well correlated with "social skills".
[1] HN has as strong knee jerk reaction when this book is mentioned, but in my experience, everyone who complained had not read the book, and almost all the complaints were semi-strawmen.
> 1. You've encountered someone as annoying as yourself :-)
> 2. You learn a bit more about the dynamics of conversations.
This is the last thing I expected to find under a post about an SRS, but I think I’ve just gone through this over the course of this year. (I knew I was extremely annoying at times, but didn’t realize how much annoying I was, and what to do. I think I know now :’)
Love HN for weird tangents like this. Thanks for the reading list!
Thank you for this post and your suggested readings!
In what way are you a professional problem solver such that it applies to random problems in peoples' lives?
The thing that drives me nuts is when people start throwing out immediate ideas, sometimes before I've even given a full account of the problem. But even if they do wait, I don't feel like explaining why all your immediate ideas don't work - most of the time, I've also already thought of those things. Try asking questions instead.
There's value to anyone willing to listen to you talking about your problem. Otherwise rubber duck debugging wouldn't work.
Why don't you ask some questions about their obviously wrong solutions instead od spoiling the fun they have guessing? After all to are the one with a problem.
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The way I approach these situations is by reminding myself that the speaker is implicitly making a request - a request for empathy or understanding. While it's tempting to try to solve their problems, what they really want is for their feelings to be heard.
"Oh, that must have been frustrating."
THIS! And realizing this is a major step forward for many men in learning to better communicate with women (a stereotype, sure, but one that has many true instances IME).
You may enjoy, It's not about the nail. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg
What I was doing is very common. Trying to engage logically with what logic can engage with, while failing to recognize that the emotional challenge is what has to be dealt with first. And that once feelings are out of the way, the logical problem will be massively easier to solve.
> I do not know how to respond to such situations.
>I am a professional problem solver.
As it so happens, you can probably apply the latter to solve your knowledge gap re/ the former.
Unless you don't actually consider it a problem, but a facet of your personality or something. Valid. But, if you are capable of applying that thinking to yourself, why are you not able to extend the same grace to others, and wait until you're asked for a solution?
It's important to remember there's no "right" or "wrong," it's all about connection.
If a stranger says, "my bike tire is flat," in most western cultures, they might very well be asking for your help to reinflate their tire.
If your loved one says the same, well you have a lot more context to fill in their subtext with. If they're displeased with your reasonable attempts to help them—like you'd help a stranger—it might mean that they were asking for something else. Finding out what that "something else" is, and adapting to each other's differences in "what was said" vs "what was heard," is part of what it means to build a connection with someone.
> I am a professional problem solver
The question is, do you want to be anything more than that?
Even as a problem solver you might ask yourself, what should I do in any given interaction to not become the additional secondary problem myself.
Yeah it's insulting. It would be very long and boring to list all the things I thought of and discarded, just to ward off such attempts at help. If someone doesn't ask your advice, don't give it.
I feel you, I totally do. I get wanting to vent and wanting to be heard but solutions should come first. Honestly, when I hear people annoyed about offering solutions I get their need to engage with them differently but I also kind of believe they have a dysfunction about how they relate to the world.
This attitude reminds me of another phrase that I've internalized.
Choosing to be right, is choosing to be alone.
Whatever you choose to put above trying to get along with others, limits who can be part of your group. In the extreme, you will feel absolutely justified. And yet be absolutely alone.
As an example, language communities that focus on being able to find the ideal way to program (eg Lisp) tend to splinter. The languages that achieve broad acceptance (eg Python) do things that most people recognize as bad.
This doesn't mean that we should always choose to get along, rather than being right. But failing to address emotions up front has damaged so many parts of my life, that I firmly wish that I hadn't stood for so long on how right my behavior was.
I hope that your choices are working better for you than my past choices did for me.
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If solutions always come first then you might never get a chance to vent. Maybe venting clears the annoyance from the brain enough to make it easier to understand any solutions that might be offered. Also sometimes I have been offered solutions that seem obvious to me, like did you really think I hadn’t thought of that? Which is especially piquing haha
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It’s just like in programming interviews—sometimes you need to clarify your understanding before diving into potential solutions
I wanted to chime in to say: this is me, I do/have done this, and am also seeking to change this behaviour. It has never once occurred to me to try using spaced repetition for something like this, so thank you to putting the suggestion into my brain! I intend to put this into action as soon as I'm able to.
This is really inspiring. Doing whatever you gotta do to be a better support for your loved ones is commendable.
Can you give an example of what you record in your SR system? Is it the anecdote itself? Do you generalize the pattern? Is there a "front" and "back?" A cloze?
My prompt for that is, When did I last dramatically fail Kate at decision support?
Recalling the scene and the details is part of the exercise.
I do the visualization while journaling about it. Here is an example of what that written record looks like.
Aug 19, 2025. She was stressed because she thought that Phoenix’ dentist was ripping her off. A couple of quick suggestions later, and her meltdown was not about how bad I am at decision support!
Kate is able to come to the right decision. She wants someone to listen to her, be there emotionally, and not offer suggestions unless they have a lot of context. But first, second, and third, make her feel listened to.
Note. This is tied to a visualization that causes me to connect to the right emotion at the right time. So I not only won't do the wrong thing, but I'll also be doing the right thing.
How do you grade a card like this?
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Definitely want to talk about this too. I've been thinking of my own daily learning through tools like Anki and trying to devise a sort of "life stack" where I'm adding stuff and refreshing myself on it and this top comment from OP just sort of crystalizes that.
Love this example. I started putting my Kindle highlights in the SRS—no prompt or anything, just the quoted text verbatim—and the effortless periodic review essentially burned the quotes in my memory for easy recall in moments when they were appropriate.
Did you know there is a limit on how many highlights you can record? It is a setting in the DRM of Kindle books.
If you are reading a book with DRM, marking things and planning to load them into SRS later, take care as it silently stops saving the highlights as text.
Very interesting example. For me spaced repetition today looks very different than it used to till a few years ago.
My "system" is now some google docs, some google sheets and some html hosted on my domain. I have no black box algorithm to offload to.
I'm now curious if i could try applying it to everyday things i learn and want reinforcement on along with the technical stuff i want handy. Thanks for sharing.
So cool. Would love to hear more - What app do you use? How often do you clear your inbox and how long does it take?
And how did the dentist fare?
The dental work that was needed, negotiated in advance, and paid for, happened.
The dentist's exorbitant rate on nitrous oxide (which we were not informed of in advance) was successfully renegotiated.
Unsurprisingly, my initial suggestions were in no way helpful to discovering this solution to the problem.
Interesting example with some questionable couple dynamics.
Looks really healthy to me. It’s unhealthy when a partner can’t recognize that they actually were at fault and try to change, but instead needs every fight to resolve with “we were both wrong”.
To add color, this is an interaction that started with one person being stressed. Expecting ideal behavior out of a stressed person is unreasonable.
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> A couple of quick suggestions later, and she went to being mad at me about not having heard the problem through before trying to fix it badly
Sounds like you're not the only one at fault lol.
Do you get mad at your wife if she offers suggestions before emotionally connecting? And would it still be too late even if she realises how "stupid she was"?
Yes; well, I might not get "mad" at my wife, but I might emotionally disengage or feel like I lack closure were I to explain a situation to my wife and she responded with solutions before I even had the chance to finish.
It took me a long time to realize this. Actually, I've just now realized it clearly. Our emotional expression and the scenario may be a bit different, but it's fundamentally the same concept.
Part of the reason offering suggestions is 'wrong' is because it implies that they haven't tried to think of solutions to their problem. You are unwittingly implying that you are smarter than they are, even if that is not your intention.
Yeah. Step 1 is basically to say “damn, that sucks … what do you think you might do?” (or other clarifying questions).
If feel like only someone who is kind of dumb or insecure would think that ...
Smart people will even talk to a rubber duck to solve problems, because sometimes there's something obvious you missed.
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What’s the point of this? One only can control one’s self. Who cares if the other person was in the wrong too.
What is the point in replying to me then?
Maybe you should take action if you think someone else is in the wrong? You did.
So what? She isn't replying, and he* isn't talking about her faults. The story is about his introspection and self-correction.
*Assuming poster's gender.
OK but if a woman (assumed) was saying she was using flash cards to learn how to stop her disregulated husband from taking out his anger on her over his own dumb mistakes (my interpretation maybe but no is actually disagreeing) .... you wouldn't be questioning me calling it out.