I'm curious what you've seen in your friends that would make them seem massively better. I've thought of trying out supermemo, so I'd like to hear how it's helped you.
Ah, when I said massively better I was mainly referring to in terms of SuperMemo skill. I started talking a lot to them around February which is also when we all started to improve but I didn't know them well enough last year to be able to do a before/after comparison.
I can comment on myself though. I'm very low conscientiousness/have ADHD (without conscientiousness issues I'd probably have gotten 3-4 times as much done as I otherwise have). Around 2 years ago, and much of last year, I was pretty miserable. It's hard to say exactly what my thought process was back then (since I think differently now) but I got stressed very easily, could not message people without bad anxiety/overthinking, was in poor fitness, got little done, etc. etc..
I'm not sure what percentage of it I can attribute to supermemo (since you can't tell where memories come from) and I still struggle a fair bit but I've been able to get significantly better at managing stress sanely, not stress about talking to people so much, improve fitness and other lifestyle changes. A lot of these seem like they'd be things you just sort of do build but for the stress stuff in particular, I think I've been influenced heavily by stuff I've learned (though a big part of that influence also comes from creator of supermemo himself, both over email and from supermemo.guru). If I get back to incremental writing, I think you'd be able to see some of the benefits I've had in terms of creativity. Some days I can't sleep because there are just too many ideas popping up to be written down. Unfortunately I haven't gotten into the habit yet though I plan to establish a few other baser habits (like better sleep, ironically) and after to move back to it.
If you want to hear a miracle story where I started using supermemo and then wrote 10 research papers and completed lots of huge projects, you won't find that with me (I think 5-10 years from now you might). I don't regret it all though because the delta from where I started and to where I am now is huge (though it's hard to feel it day to day because of hedonic treadmill).
I would note, if you do try SuperMemo, maintain skepticism. One mistake I made especially when I first started is just importing neat things and memorizing them, without thinking about application. I'm certain that there are users at least 3x better than me, entirely because they're good at being selective/have more base knowledge so they can get rid of more overlapping inputs.
I can comment on myself though. I'm very low conscientiousness/have ADHD (without conscientiousness issues I'd probably have gotten 3-4 times as much done as I otherwise have). Around 2 years ago, and much of last year, I was pretty miserable. It's hard to say exactly what my thought process was back then (since I think differently now) but I got stressed very easily, could not message people without bad anxiety/overthinking, was in poor fitness, got little done, etc. etc..
I'm not sure what percentage of it I can attribute to supermemo (since you can't tell where memories come from) and I still struggle a fair bit but I've been able to get significantly better at managing stress sanely, not stress about talking to people so much, improve fitness and other lifestyle changes. A lot of these seem like they'd be things you just sort of do build but for the stress stuff in particular, I think I've been influenced heavily by stuff I've learned (though a big part of that influence also comes from creator of supermemo himself, both over email and from supermemo.guru). If I get back to incremental writing, I think you'd be able to see some of the benefits I've had in terms of creativity. Some days I can't sleep because there are just too many ideas popping up to be written down. Unfortunately I haven't gotten into the habit yet though I plan to establish a few other baser habits (like better sleep, ironically) and after to move back to it.
If you want to hear a miracle story where I started using supermemo and then wrote 10 research papers and completed lots of huge projects, you won't find that with me (I think 5-10 years from now you might). I don't regret it all though because the delta from where I started and to where I am now is huge (though it's hard to feel it day to day because of hedonic treadmill).
I would note, if you do try SuperMemo, maintain skepticism. One mistake I made especially when I first started is just importing neat things and memorizing them, without thinking about application. I'm certain that there are users at least 3x better than me, entirely because they're good at being selective/have more base knowledge so they can get rid of more overlapping inputs.