Chasing 10X: How Anki Saved My Software Career

Chasing 10X: How Anki Saved My Software Career 9/9/22, 17:09
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Table of
Contents
SiteKit
Chasing 10X: How Background
Anki Saved My
What Is Spaced
Repetition?
Software Career Picking The

Right
Interval
Publication Date | > Senrigan (Home) Why Is
March 27, 2019 >> Other Articles Spaced
Last Updated | June Repetition
25, 2020 Rare?
Examples
Background Benefits
I was burned out and my software career was Productivity
stalling just three years in. My memory sucked. Benefits
Was my poor memory from stress, lack of sleep Commitment
or was it always this bad? Work was a cycle of Personal
"TODAY IS THE DAY I CHANGE" and end in a Reflection
self-loathing dopamine-addicted HackerNews, Chasing
Reddit and Medium. I was a failure. 10X
Advice I Needed But Ignored #213:

Don't tie your self-worth to your
work.
I wanted to be a good, hell, great software

engineer. But my work was mediocre. Even
worse, I was trying. My ass was in that chair
twelve hours a day, six days a week trying to
write beautiful Python code. I was constantly
https://senrigan.io/blog/chasing-10x-leveraging-a-poor-memory-in-software-engineering/ Page 1 of 13
looking up documentation and sucked into the

internet's rabbit-hole of distractions. I was a try-
hard failure.
And then there was Kyle. Kyle and I had started

programming from scratch; we were both
learning on the job. Three years later, our
progress was nothing alike.
"Kyle is the first 10X engineer I have

ever worked with." - Every. single.
coworker. w/ 15+ years experience.
Kyle worked weekdays from 10AM to 4PM. He got

his work done early and single-handedly output
80% of the entire team. Adding more insult to
injury, he only worked like 60% of the time. The
rest of the time was spent on ... HackerNews,
Reddit and Medium. I was the try-hard slow
brute, and Kyle was the graceful hare.
Kyle didn't have a secret routine. He never

meditated. He was skinny despite McDonalds for
breakfast, lunch and dinner. But, Kyle had a super
hero ability. Photographic memory in API syntax
and documentation.
I wanted that and I was jealous. My career was

stuck and something needed to change. And so I
began a dedicated journey into spaced
repetition. Every day for three years, I spent one
to three hours in spaced repetition. It was brutal
and I needed it.
What Is Spaced Repetition?

Spaced repetition is a remembering technique
that will remind you concepts at spaced intervals
to maximize memory retention efficiently. It's a
strategy to remind our brains of facts; it exploits
that the best time to be remember a fact is right
before we forget it. Our brains are forgetful, but
we can use strategies to make it less forgetful.
At increasing spacing intervals, memory is more

likely to be consolidated into long-term memory
(and less likely forgotten). Notice the duration of
each reminder is further out every time.
Note: This image represents exactly the same as

above, but in different colors to promote
retention. I'm full of brain hacks.
Pretend you had six chances in a year to remind

Bill Gates your name. If Bill remembers your
name a full calendar year later, you get a million
dollars!
Picking The Right Interval

Which reminder interval would you pick?
Option 1 - Cram Before the Exam: Dec

26th, 27th, 28th, 29th, 30th, 31st.
Option 2 - The Ivy League Valedictorian
Who Never Procrastinates: 1st of every
other month. Jan 1st, March 1st, April 1st,
etc.
Option 3 - Spaced Repetition: January 1st,
January 3rd, January 20th, Feb 28th, April
15th, September 30th.
Option 3 (Spaced Repetition) gives you the

highest probability of Bill remembering your
name. Ah, the Captain Obvious Blog Writer.
But Why Option 3?
1. Cramming rarely works after it passes from

short-term memory. How many cram
sessions do you remember from high school?
2. Evenly spaced reminders sort-of works, but
you'd have to review all your knowledge at
every interval, which doesn't sound
scalable/fun/have a social life.
3. Our brains work best with exponentially
spaced reminders.
Outside of medical students and language

learning apps like Duolingo, spaced repetition
isn't common. It's not as cool as cramming, but it
works. Medical students use it to memorize those
awful thousand page textbooks. Duolingo uses it
because it's effective. Remember that guy
dominating Jeopardy a few years ago? Spaced
repetition fanatic.
Why Is Spaced Repetition Rare?

If it's so amazing, why isn't spaced repetition
common?
People don't know about it.

Even if you use it, it's hard to make a habit of
reviewing flashcards.
Making flashcards is annoying. Who wants to
type notes into a flashcard app?
People take a big talk about self-
improvement, but don't want to do no stinkin'
hard work.
It's not cool. You're not going to bringing up
flashcard studying on your first date.
But software engineers already have these

pain points ...
Engineers are expected to know about

upcoming trends. Otherwise, you'd still be
using BitBucket and Adobe Flash.
Engineers are creatures of habit. Make
reviewing your flashcard app your first work
task (or the train, the toilet right before
Candy Crush). Stop StackOverflowing "how
do i amend my git commit" five times every
month.
Instead of using Quiver, EverNote, Notion,
etc, for notetaking, save it as a flashcard.
Being a good software engineer requires
lifelong learning.
Let's be honest, you're not getting first
dates.
Anki and SuperMemo are the most common

spaced repetition applications. Both help create
flashcards and quiz based off an spacing
algorithm. If you get a question right, it'll ask
again further out. Get a card wrong? It'll remind
you tomorrow. I use Anki. Anki seems more
common among software engineers. Download
the mobile app (iOS/Android). The Android app is
fantastic.
Some quick terminology (in case you forgot

...)
Spaced repetition is a learning technique.

Anki and SuperMemo are applications that
will use spaced repetition.

You create flashcards in Anki and
SuperMemo. They quiz you at spaced
intervals.
A deck is commonly referred to as your
entire flashcard collection.
Examples
Habit: Whenever I search StackOverflow, I'll
immediately create a flashcard of my question
and the answer(s) into Anki.
Example: Parameter about gsutil.
An easy question I got wrong yesterday. I was

almost too embarrassed to show this example.
Spaced repetition is an offline poor man's

StackOverflow (Yes, I tried Dash). Pre-Anki, I was
forgetting syntax equivalent to my daily
learnings. I was already using Anki for general
knowledge. Why not embrace programming
flashcards for Anki? I was hesitant because of a
few reasons.
1. Laziness. Writing good Anki programming

flashcards can be hard.
2. Flashcards w/code is difficult to remember.
It's much easier to remember the capital of
Mongolia (Ulaanbaatar) than how to copy a
list of files in a .txt file from an externally
mounted hard drive using xargs (cat list.txt |
xargs -l{} mv /Volumes/External/{} /Desktop).
Getting a card wrong for multiple days is
frustrating.
And for the last three years, I've added

EVERYTHING to Anki. Bash aliases, IDE
Shortcuts, programming APIs, documentation,
design patterns, etc. Having done that, I wouldn't
recommend adding EVERYTHING. That topic of
my Anki mistakes deserves it's own article ...
EDIT: I've compiled the list of Anki Tips and

Tricks here
Benefits
After embracing Anki, once I had mastered a
card, the quick recall around language and
framework APIs was like having my prayer to the
flow gods finally being answered.
Three years ago, my all-too common pattern was

:
Start coding.
StackOverflow some syntax I frustratingly
forgot.
Get distracted. Read HackerNews.
Hmm, nothing new on HackerNews, let's try
Reddit.
Try to get into flow?
Despair. Maybe someone posted a new story
on HackerNews?
Now equipped with an improved memory in API

syntax, documentation, country capitals, and
engineering — there's a stark difference.
Productivity Benefits
2016 - A year described as short bursts
followed by frustrating distractions ...
Current Year to Date - I Should Find A New

Hobby ...
Commitment
Spaced repetition requires a daily commitment,
but guarantees a great memory. Most users
average about twenty minutes a day reviewing. If
you're adding zero additional cards (cough,
slacker), your review time averages to zero as
knowledge become long-term memory. The

confidence of knowing that once something is
added to Anki it won't be forgotten is
intoxicating.
Personal Reflection
Spaced repetition is my most important

career/life-hack. It's not always easy. It doesn't
guarantee you'll be a better engineer (best
practices and design beats syntax), but it'll make
you a capable one. When you can quickly recall
syntax, you'll be amazed at how fast you can
code. Sometimes that just results in shitty code,
faster. But the best coders code a lot. And
that's the only guaranteed way to improve.
Knowledge compounds in interesting ways. Many

of my flashcards include blogs and articles about
engineering — knowing the history of RPC, SOAP,
REST and GraphQL has lead to improved design
and architecture decisions. Counter: Memorizing

binary search tree algorithms has yet to come in
handy ...
Chasing 10X
I began this by chasing an absurd dream of
"becoming a 10X engineer". Like there would be a
graduation ceremony or something ridiculous. On
second thought, the "Biggest Tool of the Year"
award sounds about right.
I have no idea what constitutes a 10X engineer;

we don't have benchmarks that encompass
output, leadership, code quality and technical
debt. Chasing 10X became meaningless when I
finally had the confidence that I was shaping my
own self-improvement. An improved memory
gave me control of my own destiny.
Kyle is still multiples better than I will ever be,

and that's perfectly fine.
Advice I Needed But Ignored #421:

Don't compare yourself to others.
Just make sure you're improving
everyday. Compound interest is the
most powerful thing in the universe.
Misc:
My Anki Analytics
Followup Articles:
Everything I Know: A Comprehensive Guide
of Strategies, Tips, and Tricks for Spaced

Repetition
My Favorite Hacks to Avoid The Internet's
Distractions (EDIT: Coming ... soon, I swear)
Other Great Links About Spaced Repetition:
Spaced Repetition - Gwern

Augmenting Long-term Memory - Michael
Nielsen
Memorizing a programming language using
spaced repetition software - Derek Sivers
Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever
Learn? Surrender - Wired
YouTube Videos of Anki Tutorials and Tips by
The AnKing
A Great Comic About Spaced Repetition
Contact: Please feel free to email me at

jeffshek@gmail.com or tweet @shekkery.
Friendly Request: Writing quality articles is

hard. Getting traffic is even harder. Thank you for
sharing!
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Chasing 10X: How Anki Saved My Software Career 9/9/22, 17:09

Want to improve engineering or meta-learning?

Chasing 10X: How Background

Software Career Picking The

Advice I Needed But Ignored #213:

I wanted to be a good, hell, great software

looking up documentation and sucked into the

And then there was Kyle. Kyle and I had started

"Kyle is the first 10X engineer I have

Kyle worked weekdays from 10AM to 4PM. He got

Kyle didn't have a secret routine. He never

I wanted that and I was jealous. My career was

What Is Spaced Repetition?

At increasing spacing intervals, memory is more

Note: This image represents exactly the same as

Pretend you had six chances in a year to remind

Picking The Right Interval

Option 1 - Cram Before the Exam: Dec

Option 3 (Spaced Repetition) gives you the

But Why Option 3?

1. Cramming rarely works after it passes from

Outside of medical students and language

Why Is Spaced Repetition Rare?

People don't know about it.

flashcard studying on your first date.

But software engineers already have these

Engineers are expected to know about

Anki and SuperMemo are the most common

Some quick terminology (in case you forgot

Spaced repetition is a learning technique.

will use spaced repetition.

Example: Parameter about gsutil.

An easy question I got wrong yesterday. I was

Spaced repetition is an offline poor man's

1. Laziness. Writing good Anki programming

And for the last three years, I've added

EDIT: I've compiled the list of Anki Tips and

Three years ago, my all-too common pattern was

Now equipped with an improved memory in API

Current Year to Date - I Should Find A New

knowledge become long-term memory. The

Spaced repetition is my most important

Knowledge compounds in interesting ways. Many

and architecture decisions. Counter: Memorizing

I have no idea what constitutes a 10X engineer;

Kyle is still multiples better than I will ever be,

Advice I Needed But Ignored #421:

Everything I Know: A Comprehensive Guide

of Strategies, Tips, and Tricks for Spaced

Other Great Links About Spaced Repetition:

Spaced Repetition - Gwern

Contact: Please feel free to email me at

Friendly Request: Writing quality articles is

Like Software Engineering, Machine Learning

Next | The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick [Book

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