[hareket]

While I respect your viewpoint, my personal experience significantly differs from that.

My familiarity with speed-reading is limited because I never deemed it worth, as I think reading should mostly be a slow pleasure, but Anki, like any well-designed spaced repetition routine, algorithm, or application, got me VERY far. I returned to high school as an adult and later attended university, which provided me with a variety of reference points to compare study techniques. Initially, I used conventional methods, but eventually, -- a few months in --, I discovered Anki. Not only did I start ranking among the top students, but I also completed both degrees in less time than typically required; something I never managed to do, no matter how hard I tried.

Recently, I've been experimenting with various study techniques, free from the constraints of formal education that could potentially bias the outcome, and I've observed a significant decline in my performance when I deviated from Anki or spaced repetition in general. Conversely, my performance improves when I reincorporate it. Mind you that I still have to put the required effort, carefully selecting what to memorize, and designing it well. You can't get away from that.

[skydhash]

Maybe the process is what got you there, not space repetition itself. Creating a moment of time to revisit concept is a core of all the successful methods I’ve seen.

[jbstack]

How do you know when is the optimal time for those revisits? Is it a week later, then a month later, then 6 months later? How do you make that decision? What method will you use to revisit? Will you locate the original book, find the right page, re-read the passage? Or perhaps you'll go to the right section in your notebook and re-read that?

Any time you do all of that you're essentially doing what Anki does but in a less efficient and less automated way. The point of Anki is (a) to make a reasonable decision on your behalf about when to revisit, and (b) to automate the process of retrieving and displaying the information which is being revisited.

[skydhash]

I don't really care about optimal. When the needs arise or my interest has renewed, I do what you said if I can't recall the exact things, I go back to the original source. I'm not really interested in memorizing random facts, I prefer everything to be connected in an organic manner, preferably based on my interest, needs, or context.

[hareket]

I've considered and accounted for it, but if I remove the spaced repetition part, it all falls apart, whatever the variation happens to be. At best it works in the short term, but after that, much of it becomes vague background noise.