Manual maps of content as form of spaced repetition

If the scheduling of spaced repetition is too much for you maybe replace it with maintaining a map of content

Maps of content (or MOCs) is a buzzword in the lore of Obsidian, the popular markdown editor and knowledge base. The concept of MOCs describes creating one or more hierarchies of notes containing links to your other notes, similar to a table of context or index for a book. Though because Obsidian is flexible you can have as many hierarchies or table of contents as you like.

One upside maintaining MOCs is that maintaining such maps act as tool to help you memorize your content through repeatedly exposing you to historical content - since every time you add new content you are prompted to review your map. This is particularly the case if you handcraft your MOCs to include a little context and place similar links close together

Traditional way of memorizing things

One popular way of memorizing things that is quite popular in the language learning community is spaced repetition. With this approach, a system or computer program periodically prompts you to review material. Anki is a much used example in the language learning comminity. There are many plugins in Obsidian for spaced repetition.

Spaced repetition has a measure of science behind it, which the makes of tools often use as a selling point. But at the same time it is important to be aware that the science studied one particular aspect of memory. The original research for spaced repetition focused on nonsense words where there was no structure to help you remember what you were learning. In practice, the structure of the knowledge your are learning can have a large effect on the likelihood of remembering material indeed and you can deliberately create structure to help you learn things.

One of the ideas behind essay writing and exercises is that they make you play around enough with concept that they stick. Exercise and essays can, for some material, remove the need to actually try to memorize anything. The retention of information can come for free if you play enough with ideas.

Taking notes in Obsidian is a way of creating a more structured, linked and long lasting idea in your head. The structure that you create while taking notes can become struture embedded in your might. Nevertheless, however strongly you embed an idea your head, some repetition of can help - and spaced repetition systems can help - but my experience with them has not always been positive…

The problems with spaced repetition

I’ve tried spaced repetition at various points in my life. I’ve had problems however: looking at cards is boring; it feels slightly unnatural and not like you are just playing a game to memorize things; it is very easy to get a "build up” of things to review that then becomes unmaintainaible. When learning languages, I disliked spaced repetition so much that I just replaced it with “be looking up words in a dictionary all the time” as at least that was interesting.

There are probably work around. You could probably add some novelty to your review process. If you have a more structured life consistent reviewing might be better.

One idea that I have extracted from spaced repetition is that idea of having a “driving activity” that that repeatedly exposes your to material and points out holes in your knowledge. But at the same time I think it can be better if this driving activity is in some sense “real”. An issue with “complete” activities is that they can miss out edge cases that don’t necessarily occur that often. Perhaps you combine this with an attention to the “edge cases” while you are carring out at activity. So when you find something missing you “overlearn” to fix it.

I sort of feel that eventually all forms of learning become an expert skilled specialised to the individual. Most people are experts at reading, writing and learning by the time they become adverts. With expert skills, I think the framing of tools and approaches to slow into a system work well.

In this vain, I think note taking can be one form of driving activity together with habits to help you memorize things… much also learn them and think about them.

How note taking can be a form of spaced repetition

I think that certain forms of note taking can act as form of spaced repetition, because they regularly remind you of the notes that you have taken. A key idea here is that of abstraction and example-finding / specialising.

If when you make your notes you think about the “abstract ideas” represented by a note and then link from your this abstract note back to your note. By repeatedly thinking about abstraction and and examples you end up exposing yourself to the previous things that you learn and “reviewing them”.

Note taking kind of works by creating an note taking action that lines up with a form of thought. So in this case you can create an abstraction by creating a note in your map of content, and over time refining these notes so they are more “precise”, and organising the material inside them. You create examples by ensuring that your new notes and attached somewhere to your maps of content and preferrably in multiple places.

A way of turning this into a habit is always connecting notes to “parents” (as suggested by the idea of a Home Note) trying to split and create more notes where possible so that there is more structure, placing your note in the correct place in your maps of content when you create a note, and generally cleaning up as you go.

Not a complete replacement

Of course a downside of this approach is that it is not optimised and fool proof in the way that a spaced repetition system is. With spaced repetition you are guaranteed to review your note again and potentially at the “best time” - though not necessarily in the best way. Also if you are studying lots of different things there is less of a chance of reviewing your material by chance as you add new material. Also the habit of doing a little updating and review each time you add material might be difficult.

I’s up to you if you accept the more stochastic nature of review by maintainng your notes. Depending on your use case you might like to still do some spaced repetition. You could replace you spaced repetition with an Obsidian task of tidying up and connecting your note as a more interesting form of review.

Other considerations

Abstraction and review isn’t all there is to learning. There are a few other things you might like to think about such as making your notes relevant to your actions (which PARA is all about), making your notes interesting and fun, or being part of a learning community which adds a bit of motivation by publishing your notes, or deliberately making your notes “sparse” so that they encourage memory.

There is also probably a great deal that this science of learning has to say on the topic… though a downside I have found is that much of this material is aimed at “non-expert” learners (every adult has spent enough time learning things to be an expert of sorts).

You might also like to watch this video on the topic of Obsidian in education by Helfant who seems to be very much “in the trenches” of using Obsidian for a broad US College education.

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I am readwithai. I am making tools for reading (amongst other things), sometimes using Obsidian.

If you are intersted in this you might like to read my Review of note taking in Obsidian.

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