How to Delay items in oustanding queue fast

Following autohotkey script sets automatically the number of items the current element must be delay on an outstanding repetitions queue. It works great if you have a big outstanding queue and don’t want or don’t know what articles or elements you should filter. I’m using it a lot since the 14 day supermemo ultramarathon started.

more…

Day 10, SuperMemo Ultramarathon – Sharpen your Skills

Day 10, was another success, I’m feeling in the flow now and also looking forward to the finish line. 604 repetitions where completed in a double schedule. Only four more days to go and definitively take a break (meaning I’ll do 200 reps for 2 or 3 days), then I’ll go to some knew challenge.

RMD wondered how does one keep up to date within the professional level in information related careers.

IMO people keep current within their field just by undertaking the task they are required in the present moment, for the most part, they also usually go and take certifications, courses and congress. Albeit huge amount of the information acquire trough this methods are lost in less then 1 week. At least in the medical field there is a lot of interest by the pharmaceutical companies to keep practitioners up to date with the latest drugs and treatments available, its you own duty to find out the validity of them, but you’ll have to do more research whenever you have any doubts.

As a physician the most common practice is to search for more information related to the many cases you have at work. For example, you have some patient with complaints that are not clear enough to make an accurate diagnosis from the beginning so you go to  information resource to study more or ask some specialist about this particular problem. After you get to solve the case, you usually review it again all together, but that’s about it, unless you do remember having this previous case, and you have filed in an organized manner (but that’s not the most frequent scenario). We should not only file the case and its related, previously unknown information, but it should go trough some sort of incremental processing, in a sense of building up an expertise by deliberate practice.

Every one should build up his skills progressively, else we’ll find ourselves like the person in Stephen Covey’s ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” , who is working long and hard to cut down a tree, sweated and worn out from the effort, yet, when suggested to take a break and sharpen the saw he replies ‘Goodness I don’t have time to sharpen the saw, I’m far too busy sawing!’ and carries on sawing away with the blunt blade. Sadly even in information related careers, that’s how many of us are still living. Stephen Covey refers to this aspect of self-help as “sharpening the saw”.

This idea  to adapt an IR and review of previously acquired information, whatever your career, is very interesting; but most of the time an idea, however important, can get dusted of somewhere if no goal  and strategy is put forward in order to actually do it. So I’ll be taking this idea, during my next career training, and after a couple of years (sadly more then 1000 days) I’ll tell if its something good or not needed at all.

This approach should be different in every area, some areas require constant review, because knew knowledge builds ups so fast these days, yet principles are principles, and every field has its own principles. So we should focus on IR or active spaced repetition only on these kind of information. I’ve previously posted ideas on how to choose what to included in a space repetition system and these are valid for life long career related learning to.

It would be nice if you guys share how you keep up to date?, what other strategies could we all use?.

Reminder for today:

Believe the impossible

“The greatest achievements in sports and life were performed by individuals who were to dumb to realize that what they did was impossible.”

Time to start today’s ultra, see ya!

Day 9, SuperMemo Ultramarathon – Enjoy the Ride

I don’t like dogs that much, I do like cats a lot, and if I believed that we where some other animal in our past lives then I probably would have liked been a tiger (a vegan tiger, even though I’m not a vegan right now). However, this dog surely knows how to enjoy the ride, and that’s how I felt yesterday while doing the repetitions. I made it trough 628 reps, while still processing 64 extracts, and reading two other chapter books.

The best of all, now, is that I’m feeling you can always train your self to achieve more mentally. Before starting this ultra my repetitions started to feel painful, I had to do between 250 and 350 some days, but over 50% of the time they were not finished, and hence postponed. I have no account about how many days (I could find and exact statistic on SuperMemo) this has happened, or if the main reason of this overdue repetitions was because of to much input. But yesterday I did not even feel tired of the repetitions, I do have notice the time it gets me go fall sleep has reduced a lot (meaning I’m sleepy), but the tiredness of the first day of this 14 journey was gone — maybe my hypocampus just needs more time to process data.

Also, yesterday I found about a study published on Nature that mind training programs are unable to improve our thinking abilities. I can’t  say the study has faults and/or is wrong (I haven’t critically read it yet) but, perhaps, even though this mind programs can’t make us better thinkers, SRS system can train us to be more efficient while learning, meaning that you don’t really get better organically, but your enhance the skills to deal with many steps in the learning process and that’s something great.

I’m wondering how it will feel when I go back to the 300 daily reps, if the mind is really a relativist biological computer, it will probably think I’m on vacations.

Reminder for the day:
To memorize details, think as a child, pay attention to details

As small children have not learned to categorize, they pay close attention to details, doing better then adults on memory for details.

“As people become smarter, they start to put things into categories, and one of the costs they pay is lower memory accuracy for individual differences,” Vladimir Sloutsky of Ohio State University and co-author of a paper on the study published in the May/June issue of the journal Child Development.

But, adult memory is flexible and can do a fine job remembering details, they just have to pay attention to details:

Later in the study, adults were shown pictures of imaginary insects and were able to pick them out of a lineup later on. “They remembered them because they had to pay close attention,” said Sloutsky

#Link: http://www.livescience.com/health/050517_memory.html

#Element: 58342: “As people become smarter, they start to put things into categories, and one of the …

Day 8, SuperMemo Ultramarathon

Image credit: http://www.nvbc.org/

Thank you all for following up, I’m trying to respond any comments on every daily post at least until the 14 days supermemo ultramarathon are done.

I’m feeling great about this journey as the goal for yesterday was accomplished, I also had enough time to debate and learn some issues related to “Property I” USA’s laws — That wasn’t planned, but it just came as one of yesterdays task.

Remainder for the day:

“A dream is just a dream.  A Goal is a dream with a plan and a deadline”

(Harvey Mackay)

I made 612 repetitions, more then 140 where MCQ, only 56 extracts where processed. I found out most of my time lost in previous days was due to studying to much new information, you normally know this, but its hard to grasp, unless you have really big time constrains. Still working out much better doing several blocks of repetition ( 300 morning, 100 afternoon, 212 at night).

Regarding the database collection I’m using, its a mix of personal collection and MCQ paper question banks. I’m building this collection since December 2007. Up to February it consisted mostly of SuperMemo information articles, extracts and questions. After I I read about building a compiler for some new language under another language until you could actually build a new compiler using the new language its self, I though that if SuperMemo was good enough I could prove it by studying how to use it while using it, before that my study of how to use supermemo was to much disorganized and stop learning to use it several times, I think I have know about supermemo since 2005 but it was December 2007 since I haven’t stop using it anymore.

I made a lot of mistakes while learning to use it, but by February 2008 I started to build a collection about any interest in my life, about 70% of the database is medicine related questions, maybe 8% now is SuperMemo related information, 12% Learning & Memory and Neuroscience (mainly cognitive neuroscience) 10% is varied subjects.

I have MCQ for the previous 20 years of exams taken which account to some where between 12,000 and 14,000 maybe more. Of this less than 5,000 have been covered. But now I know exactly what I already know, and what is still not finished. Is like having pictures of all the places you’ve visited but having a map that tells you what you don’t have pictures yet.

The rest of the collection is based on the information I needed in order to understand the MCQ questions. Its not about memorizing the MCQ answers, but using it to learn more while practicing the exam format, and that should help me make the grade. Last year I made 93% percentile of the required grade, this year I just have to make it, will see.