On the Three Pillars of Learning

Wisdom is a paradox. The more one learns, the more confused one becomes. Learning eliminates apprehensions to a certain degree. However, it makes an individual more vigilant, and as a result, more apprehensive.

The education system has been, since time immemorial, contaminating the minds of youngsters (and adults) with arbitrary reward and punishment mechanisms that place no value for learning. This has made them clueless about acquiring and applying wisdom efficiently. Moreover, the art of taking notes has been mutilated by the system. Note-taking, a device originally designed for self-improvement, has now been transformed into a somniferous act.

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The Three Pillars

A foundation becomes imperative to hone the craft of learning. Without a solid foundation, even the sturdiest of masterpieces crumble. In this regard, learning must rest on the bulwark of three devices: A database to store your notes, a slip box to gather your thoughts and make them mutate, and a spaced repetition software to review your notes.

Database

A strong and secure database to store the information you gather from any source becomes essential to organize such information and make them part of a greater whole. The acquisition of information in the form of notes creates a network of interconnected notes that could make a person see and think from a proper vantage point than from an obscure level. However, not all digital note-taking software offers the leeway to connect notes

The Personal Knowledge Management application Obsidian does a better job at interlinking notes better than any other apps. It uses the Markdown Language to store notes, and every note is stored as a text file. This means even if Obsidian were to discontinue their services, the learner could still have custody of his notes. Its most iconic feature is the Graph View, which lets the learner visualize the relationships between the notes in his vault¹ (vault is the obsidian term for folder).

In the case of a notebook dedicated towards a particular subject, the notes in it are perpetually put under solitary confinement. They do not offer the learner wider perspective as in the case with digital interlinked notes. Notes in a notebook related to physics overlap with notes in a book related to chemistry, but a learner who uses designated notebooks for each discipline often overlooks such overlaps due to his inability to connect the notes.

Creating a database in digital as opposed to analog has two benefits: Digital notes are easier and more convenient to be organized and viewed compared to analog notes which take up time and space. Secondly, to teach a person something from the learner’s notes or to share his notes with his student or a friend, digital fares better than analog provided they are properly organized and not set in a form that only the learner can interpret them.

If you are unsure about what type of a note-taker you are, you can always consult Tiago Forte’s classification of notetakers

Slip Box

The slip box is a box replete with index cards (or slips). This box is the chief communication partner of the learner. Its purpose is to make the learner jot down ideas that were brewed inside his head, along with interesting ideas from other sources with proper reference to the source. It is a thinking box and is not the same as the database as one might erroneously think. It moves the learner to write down ideas, think to make his ideas wider, combine similar ideas and come to various conclusions based on them and write such new ideas.

The person most associated with the slip box is the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. Although slip boxes predate Luhmann, he is credited to have evolved the concept to a simple form. Luhmann called his slip box the Zettelkasten, and with its aid and his constant endeavor, he managed to write more than 50 books and over 400 articles on various subjects².

The Slip Box works like the branches of a tree. An idea is placed first, from there two ideas emerge, and from the two ideas, four ideas in total emerge, and it goes on. Similarly, this can work backwards as well. When the learner writes down an epiphany he had on a slip, he works backwards to figure out in which category does it belong to. If he cannot figure it out initially, he will figure it out later, when more slips are filed in the slip box. When ideas are closely packed, clusters are formed. These clusters will help the learner research more on a subject and make him write more on the subject. Numbers are used to distinguish notes and to know where they are located. The learner can always consult the database if he needs additional and esoteric information to add in to his slip box to connect with existing ideas.

Slip boxes follow the bottom-up approach in managing information. This means the learner is not testing a hypothesis. He is merely writing down a thought and making branches grow out of such thought or sometimes making the initial thought a branch by making a note before it. Making thoughts evolve this way eliminates confirmation bias.

Encryption of handwritten text is required in situations where an interesting thought is deemed controversial, despicable, criminal or when the learner does not want anyone else to know what they wrote about. For this, he can resort to bad handwriting, an invented script or a personal naming convention.

As mentioned earlier, index cards function better than a notebook for their ease of mobility. If the learner thinks he missed an information after writing a card and filing it, he can file a new card behind it, which is not easy with a notebook. Similarly, if the learner wishes to discard a card, he can simply remove it.

An analog slip box is preferred to a digital one, because the zen of writing thoughts down with a pen on a paper can never be mimicked with a computer. Sometimes, the learner has to forego digital connections for a while and allow his thinking to harvest. Besides, forming letters by hand leads to widespread brain connectivity³.

Spaced Repetition Software

Spaced repetition is a learning technique that involves reviewing information at increasing intervals to improve long term retention of such information.⁴ It is based on the Spacing Effect, which is a phenomenon associated with the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, a pioneer in the study of memory. This effect shows that information spaced over time is better remembered than information massed together⁵.

The most convenient way to implement spaced repetition is through flashcards. Anki is considered the holy grail of spaced repetition softwares. It uses flashcards and allows the user to input information. Based on his performance, it schedules review intervals.

The rationale for using the Anki as the third pillar of learning is to not let the learner forget information that would otherwise be forgotten. This does not mean he has to cram a long essay on to the flashcards. They have to contain sufficient amount of information, but not too much that could overwhelm the learner.

A phone and its keyboard are sufficient to use Anki. However, this is suboptimal, because the fruits of this App can be gained optimally by using something to write down the notes by hand on the phone or tablet. A digital pen or its alternative facilitates this. For the iPad, the Apple Pencil does it. Writing notes with hand regardless of a pen or a digital pen is found to elevate mood, and this in turn increases the ability to learn⁶.

An Obsidian note, after it is done, is made into a flash card. The learner has to type what the note is about on the front face of the flashcard (Text on the front face must always be typed down for convenience while searching). Then he proceeds to the back of the card to write down the note by his hand. The Anki note must be shorter than the obsidian note, but not too short. Similarly, minute information from the slip notes can also be added to the flashcards.

Drawing a mnemonic on the back of the flashcard is the cherry on top. The absurdity and the goofiness of the drawing make the information stick better. Visually depicting notes could not only improve the learner’s ability to think and draw, but also could increase recalling the information in the flashcards more efficiently⁷

Flashcards work as an aid that lets the learner review what he learned. It is the core essence of the material on the back of the card that is to be learned and not what is written. Hence, what is written on the back of the card are not to be rote-learned.

Precautions

It becomes essential to make a backup for the Anki decks. They can be exported to a specific part of both your cloud storage plus local storage (having two backups is better than having one) once a week or whenever it is deemed fit.

With Obsidian, it saves files locally as opposed to apps like Notion or Evernote. Similarly Obsidian Sync (paid), and iCloud are used to save files to the cloud to enable the learner to use the files from different devices.

The slips (index cards) in a slip box are susceptible to water damage, and ink smudges. Keeping them in a dark and dry place can extend their life. An apothecary cabinet is the most preferred option to store index cards. A frugal option would be a shoebox.

TLDR for the Lazy

• The synergy of a database, a spaced repetition software and a slip box can help anyone become a better learner.
• For database, the software Obsidian is preferred for its versatility, ability to interlink notes, and local storage of notes.
• For spaced repetition, the application Anki is used, which helps in making flashcards
• A slip box must be analog and not digital. Its purpose is to facilitate thinking, making connections, and coming into conclusions based on them.
• Take necessary precautions to extend the life of your precious notes.

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1. https://help.obsidian.md/Plugins/Graph+view ↩︎
2. Åkerstrøm Andersen, N. (2003). “4: Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory”. In Discursive analytical strategies. Bristol, UK: Policy Press. Retrieved Aug 11, 2024, from https://doi.org/10.51952/9781447342205.ch004 ↩︎
3.  Van der Weel FR and Van der Meer ALH (2024) Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity: a high-density EEG study with implications for the classroom. Front. Psychol. 14:1219945. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1219945 ↩︎
4. “Spaced Repetition (Article) | Learn to Learn.” Khan Academy. Accessed August 12, 2024. https://www.khanacademy.org/science/learn-to-learn/x141050afa14cfed3:learn-to-learn/x141050afa14cfed3:spaced-repetition/a/l2l-spaced-repetition  ↩︎
5. Sisti HM, Glass AL, Shors TJ. Neurogenesis and the spacing effect: learning over time enhances memory and the survival of new neurons. Learn Mem. 2007 May 10;14(5):368-75. doi: 10.1101/lm.488707. PMID: 17522028; PMCID: PMC1876761. ↩︎
6. Ihara AS, Nakajima K, Kake A, Ishimaru K, Osugi K, Naruse Y. Advantage of Handwriting Over Typing on Learning Words: Evidence From an N400 Event-Related Potential Index. Front Hum Neurosci. 2021 Jun 10;15:679191. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2021.679191. PMID: 34177498; PMCID: PMC8222525. ↩︎
7. Udomon, Iboro et al. “Visual , Audio , and Kinesthetic Effects on Memory Retention and Recall.” (2013). ↩︎