You can fake this reasonably well with tags, or alternately, just importing on a chapter by chapter basis.

The expression is "against the grain", deriving from cutting wood against its grain, fyi.

I don't know why common opinion is against it, it's just the impression I've gotten. I think it stems from the tendency to caution against blindly memorizing things that you could just look up when needed.

But there's a middle ground of things that I'll forget without anki cards but that I do use often enough to justify memorizing.

I don't have a ton of math cards, but I have a few, plus I've used anki alongside a few other textbooks (as well as for learning programming languages, which is against the grain of common advice), and I've been using anki effectively for about three years now (I used it ineffectively for several months before that - I think the learning curve of making good cards about the right things is one of the hardest parts of anki).

I think long term retention of these texts is one of the biggest advantages it has. I tend to go through phases of caring and not caring about topics, and with anki I've been able to ignore a text for months and then jump back in pretty quickly (where before I would have had to start mostly over, even if I could move through the old material much faster than before).

How do you get notifications only if there are still due cards? I would like this

To flesh out my opinion:

• I have basically all notifications off (really only for calls, texts, and alarms), which minimizes the downsides
• having maps / search available all the time is really convenient. I used to spend a lot of effort either looking up directions or being lost, now I don't
  • I've found that using my phone to triage emails / rss / whatever is faster than on a full computer, because of the touchscreen
• it functions as a mobile hot spot (not sure if older phones do this) so when it's nice out I can sit in the park and work, which is pretty pleasant
• it converts small amounts of downtime into interesting reading opportunities (not really roi, but enjoyable)

Generally speaking, the smartphone keeps my tools close to me instead of at home. I use anki, beeminder, my calendar and other electronic assistance heavily, so I think that might be why I get more value out of it.

Yeah I really should use moisturizer more often, but I can never seem to find a convenient place in my daily routine for it

I could send you some of my anki cards, but I don't know that you'll get useful structural information out of them. They tend to be pretty random bits that I think I'll want to know or phrases I want to build associations between. For most things, I take actual notes (I find that writing things down helps me remember the shape of the idea better, even if I never look at them), and only make flashcards for the highest value ideas.

It took me several months of starting and quitting anki to start to get the hang of it, and I'm still learning how to better structure cards to be easier to remember and transmit useful information.

I found this blog post and the two it links to at the top to be useful descriptions of an approach to learning, which incorporates anki among other things

I have been wanting to increase my general kindness lately. If anyone is looking for an accountability partner for random acts of kindness, gratitude journaling, or anything similar (or has good ideas), let me know.