Emotional difficulties of spaced repetition
A few people (Piotr Wozniak? Andy Matuschak? Michael Nielsen? hnous?) have talked about things like "why isn't spaced repetition more popular/mainstream?" Without digging into the literature, here's my own brainstorm of what makes spaced repetition emotionally hard for me:
- Feeling like a perpetual student in a subject due to spaced repetition
- Competence vs learning distinction means spaced repetition feels like effort without progress
- Spaced repetition constantly reminds one of inadequacies
- Iteration cadence for spaced repetition experiments -- slow feedback loop means you're often not sure if you're doing the right thing until months later
- Maintaining habits is hard, and spaced repetition is a habit
- Spaced repetition systems remind you when you are beginning to forget something
- There are not many established best practices for how to do spaced repetition well (even things like the 20 rules have counter-examples)
