[yard2010]

Anecdotally I stumbled upon this phenomenon when trying to learn how to play the piano. I noticed that at the end of a session I make so many mistakes and feel like I didn't learn that much, but coming back to it after a day or two I really felt the difference.

[boxed]

Motor learning is quite different from the type of information the article talks about. I tried adding dance moves into Anki to do spaced repetition and it's extremely obvious that it's a great way to remember a move very badly but never getting good at it. Compare that to the geography deck where Anki is just perfectly suited for the task and smashes it.

[leonhard]

Do you have more experiences with learning dance moves and spaced repetition you can share? That sounds interesting. (Also what dance is it?)

[OriginalPenguin]

Spaced repetition works well for motor learning. You just have to keep hitting “Again” until you are actually good at it.

[boxed]

I don't think that's very useful. You're saying basically treating anything except mastery as "I forgot". That's too much practice. It also doesn't take into considering that you are better of doing your reps later in the day (ie close to your sleep cycle).

Sure, you can sort of use SRS here, but it's suboptimal and probably will leave too many cards in the top priority "learning" pile causing too much load, or you train incorrectly.

Still, I agree that this is MUCH better than NOT doing SRS if you don't have an alternate tool with a better algorithm.

[k__]

Learning to play an instrument feels like magic.

You fail the whole day.

Don't have the feeling anything sticks.

Then, the next day it works right from the start.

No new insights, nothing, it just works.

[XCSme]

I am coaching table-tennis, and sometimes I tell people that we only actually "learn" while we sleep. So, without sleeping, the brain doesn't have time to "save" the new information for future use.

Not sure if it's factually correct, but it seems about right, sleeping seems to be the magic sauce, and the time when all memories are written from RAM to disk.

[Qem]

I never played any instrument, but I had the exact same experience getting through difficult stages in videogames.

[k__]

Yes, me too.

It seems to be a thing with practicing motion sequences.

[sobjornstad]

I've noticed the same thing with rote memory tasks like lines of poetry, so I think it might be a more general thing involving the memory consolidation properties of sleep, maybe particularly focused on fluency/speed rather than mere ability to recall.