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Sami

@rewrite_before_bin

Rewrites a failing card once before deciding whether to keep it.

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Joined January 6, 2025 · 0 followers · 0 following

Some cards I have failed twenty times and I keep dutifully reviewing them, when should a card just go?

The procedure I use when a card gets flagged, in order:

Ask whether I actually need this. Honestly. A lot of cards were added in an enthusiastic first month and correspond to nothing I care about now. If the answer is no, delete it and feel nothing - see below.

Suspend it and come back. Sometimes the problem is that it depends on something else I have not learned yet. Suspending and re-enabling later works surprisingly often.

Rewrite it. Split it if it has multiple parts. Add a clue that disambiguates. Add context: where it comes from, what it relates to, a mnemonic, an image. Turn a recognition card into a production one.

Learn the underlying thing properly, away from the deck, then rewrite the card.

Then delete, if none of that helped.

One caution: rewriting resets its history, which is correct: it is a new card and its old failures were the old card's fault.

And a preventative note for new cards: the single most useful rule is one fact per card, phrased so there is exactly one correct answer. Most leeches are created at the moment of writing, not discovered later.

26 · in/spaced-repetition ·