Chapter 8 Exercises: Spaced Repetition

These exercises build progressively — the first establishes the baseline experience, the later ones build a sustainable system. Don't read through them and move on. Pause, do Exercise 1 now, and return to the others as your schedule allows.

Exercise 1: The Forgetting Curve in Real Time (Ongoing — 5 sessions over 2 weeks)

This exercise lets you experience the forgetting curve directly and observe how spaced reviews prevent it.

Step 1: Learn ten new things today.

Choose ten vocabulary words from a language you're learning, ten technical terms from a subject you're studying, or ten facts from a topic you're working on. These should be things you genuinely don't know yet.

Study all ten. Use elaboration (connect each to what you already know — Chapter 10). Spend about two minutes per item.

After studying all ten, cover your notes and test yourself on all ten. Write down your score: ___/10.

Step 2: The interval test.

Now, without further review, come back and test yourself: - 24 hours later: /10 - 3 days later: /10 - 7 days later: /10 - 14 days later: /10

At each test, write down your answers from memory before checking.

Step 3: Analyze your personal forgetting curve.

Plot your scores on a simple graph (or just list them). Is the decline what you expected? Faster? Slower?

Now look at the specific items you're forgetting. Are some holding better than others? What's different about the ones that stuck vs. the ones that dropped?

What to look for: Most people find that without any review, 60-80% of new information is inaccessible within a week. This is normal. The forgetting curve isn't a failure of memory — it's memory doing its job, discarding what isn't being used. Spaced repetition signals to memory that something is worth keeping.

Exercise 2: Build Your First Anki Deck (or Leitner Box) — 45–60 minutes

Choose one of the following based on your situation:

Option A: Digital (Anki)

If you don't already have Anki, download and install it (free at apps.ankiweb.net). The interface is somewhat dated-looking but deeply functional.

Create a new deck for something you're currently learning. Make twenty cards using recall prompts: - At least eight basic cards (question front, answer back) - At least eight cloze deletion cards (fill-in-the-blank) - At least four "application" cards (apply this concept to this scenario)

Review your deck today. Note which cards felt hard and which felt easy.

Option B: Physical (Leitner Box)

Get a shoebox and five index card dividers (or fold thick paper). Label sections 1 through 5.

Make twenty index cards for your subject. All cards go in Box 1.

Review Box 1 today. Cards you get right move to Box 2. Cards you miss stay in Box 1.

Your review schedule: - Box 1: Every day you study - Box 2: Every other day - Box 3: Once per week - Box 4: Once every two weeks - Box 5: Once per month

Reflection after making your cards:

  • Were any cards hard to write because you realized you didn't fully understand the material? (Good — that's a valuable discovery.)
  • Did any cards feel too broad? Did you need to split them into multiple cards?
  • Are your prompts genuinely requiring recall, or are they recognition prompts in disguise?

Exercise 3: The Card Quality Audit — 20–30 minutes

Take any existing set of flashcards you have (physical or digital). If you don't have any, use the deck you made in Exercise 2.

Go through each card and rate it with one of three classifications:

Red: Problematic card. Too much information on one card; recognition-format rather than recall; testing something you don't actually need to remember; poorly worded so the "correct" answer is ambiguous.

Yellow: Adequate but could be improved. The question is fine but could be sharper; the answer is retrievable but the card doesn't test the full depth of what you need to know.

Green: Well-designed recall card. One clear concept per card; production prompt; specific and answerable; tests something genuinely important.

After classifying all your cards: - Fix or delete all red cards - Improve yellow cards where possible - Appreciate green cards — they're the standard to aim for

Reflection: What fraction of your cards were red? This is common. Most first-time flashcard makers produce mostly red cards. Understanding what makes a card well-designed is half the battle.

Exercise 4: Spacing Two Ways — The Massed vs. Distributed Comparison (4-week exercise)

This is the most time-intensive exercise in this chapter, but the most convincing one. Run it in parallel with your regular studying.

Step 1: Select two sets of material.

Find two lists of similar material from the same subject: - Two vocabulary lists of 20 words each from a foreign language - Two sets of 20 terminology items from a course you're taking - Two sets of 20 facts from a professional domain

The sets should be roughly equal in difficulty.

Step 2: Study Set A by massed practice.

Review all 20 items from Set A in one focused sitting of about 30 minutes. Test yourself at the end. Record your score.

Step 3: Study Set B by distributed practice.

Study Set B in five sessions of 6 minutes each, spread over 4 days (roughly 1-2 sessions per day). At the end of day 4, test yourself on all 20 items. Record your score.

Step 4: Test both after two weeks without further review.

Two weeks after your final study session for each set, test yourself on both. Record both scores.

What you'll typically find: Set A (massed) may score slightly higher on the immediate test but will likely show steeper forgetting. Set B (distributed) may score slightly lower immediately but will typically show dramatically better retention at two weeks.

Note: If your results show the opposite — or no difference — examine why. Were the sets actually equal in difficulty? Did you have prior knowledge of one set? Did something happen that allowed you to encounter Set A items in daily life during the two weeks?

Exercise 5: The Review Habit Audit — 30 minutes (ideally after using Anki for 2+ weeks)

This exercise works best after you've been using a spaced repetition system for at least two weeks.

Part A: Data analysis

Look at your Anki statistics (in Anki, select Stats from the main menu). Or, if using a physical Leitner box, count the cards in each box.

Answer: - What is your average daily review count? - What percentage of your reviews are cards you got right? - Which cards (or what topics) appear most frequently in your reviews? (These are your weakest areas.) - How many days did you fully skip reviews?

Part B: Consistency assessment

Rank yourself honestly on a scale of 1–10: - 1 = I reviewed almost none of the days I intended to - 5 = I reviewed about half the days I intended to - 10 = I reviewed every single day as planned

What number are you?

If you're below 7: what is the specific obstacle? Is it time? Is it finding a natural anchor moment in your day? Is it the app itself being friction-heavy?

Part C: System improvement

Based on your data, write two specific changes you'll make to your spaced repetition practice: 1. One change to your habit (when, where, how you'll review each day) 2. One change to your cards (type, format, quality, or number of new cards per day)

Reflection Questions

After completing the exercises:

  1. What surprised you about your own forgetting curve in Exercise 1? Did your personal curve look like Ebbinghaus's classic shape, or was it different?

  2. Was it harder to maintain the daily review habit or to make good cards? Which area needs more work from you?

  3. What's the ideal "anchor" habit you could attach your daily spaced repetition reviews to — an existing daily routine that could naturally carry this new behavior?

  4. Think about something you once learned well but have since forgotten (a language, a subject from school, a skill). How might your study experience have been different if you'd used spaced repetition from the beginning?

  5. What's one subject or skill area you're committed to keeping long-term that you haven't yet built a spaced repetition system for?