渐进式学习

我们的文化并不鼓励我们去思考学习。相反，我们认为学习只是发生在我们身上的事情。但是，学习本身一定是由我们自己成长起来的一系列技能组成的；我们只从其中的一些技能开始，然后慢慢发展其他技能。为什么没有更多的人不断学习更多更好的学习技能呢？因为它不会立即得到回报，它的回报有很长的延迟。

 马文-明斯基

什么是渐进式学习？

这篇文章介绍了获得坚如磐石的终身知识的最快途径：渐进学习。

渐进式学习是学生在写作时最快、最全面的学习方式（2013 年）。

渐进式学习是以计算机为基础的技术的综合，它不仅能加速而且能优化从所有可以想象到的电子材料中学习的过程。

目前，SuperMemo是唯一实现渐进式学习的软件。在 SuperMemo 中，学生向程序提供各种形式的学习材料和/或数据（文本、图片、视频、声音等）。然后，这些学习材料会逐渐转化为可以终身受用的持久知识。

渐进式学习能帮助学生将各种形式的学习材料转化为持久的记忆。

在循序渐进的学习过程中，学生通常能记住 95% 的重点内容。这些知识相对稳定，只要学习过程还在继续，这些知识就会一直保留在学生的记忆中，甚至更久。

渐进式学习可轻松确保学生终生记住 95% 的重点学习材料（只要学生确保按照程序提供的处方定期复习）。

与各种传统学习方法相比，高知识保持率的成本非常低。例如，在学习语言的过程中，一个受过良好教育的母语使用者的词汇量可以通过超级记忆法保留下来，在最初几年，每天只需花费 20 分钟，而在以后几年，每天只需花费几分钟（假设原始词汇集在 4 年中以 30-50 分钟的时间分批获得）。

与教科书式学习相比，渐进式学习只需花费极少的时间成本，就能确保较高的记忆率。

渐进式学习的名称源于学习过程的渐进性。在渐进式学习中，各方面的知识都会得到定期的处理，新知识会在过去知识的基础上定期流入。在渐进式学习中，学生处于主导地位，决定应该掌握哪些知识。他或她决定何时掌握、掌握的详细程度、优先级以及回忆/保持的理想程度。例如，在一节课中，学生可能会学习一些地理知识，发现一些健康生活方式的规则，弄懂一些统计公式，阅读朋友博客中的几段文字，处理几分钟的家庭视频收藏，为几张家庭照片添加注释，观看几段 YouTube 视频收藏，以及阅读几篇与即将举行的考试相关的文章。换句话说，所有领域的知识都会按照兴趣和重要性的比例并行增长。

学校的典型学习方式是只重视少数几个领域的知识，而忽视其余所有领域。医科学生可能会花几个月的时间掌握解剖学，而在此期间却逐渐忘记了生物化学教材（或相反）。同时，他或她也没有时间去研究当今的重要问题，而这些问题总是取决于特定背景下的特定个人。在繁重的课业负担的束缚下，学生可能永远都没有时间去弄清什么是渐进式学习。狭窄的视野和狭隘的观点只会使学习材料的选择更加难以合理化。

渐进式学习与不合理的学校系统学习恰恰相反，在学校系统学习中，一个学期只重视几个方面的知识（以牺牲其他同样重要的学习领域为代价）。

渐进式学习概述

在渐进式学习中，你可以通过以下步骤获取并保持知识：

• 
  从各种电子和非电子来源（如网上文章、YouTube 视频、音乐文件、相机中的图片、电子邮件、扫描的纸质笔记等）导入知识
• 
  对知识进行优先级排序，以便进行增量处理（例如，对物理知识进行高优先级排序，对电影琐事进行低优先级排序，等等）。渐进式方法意味着以小段、小步的方式处理知识
• 
  逐渐将学习材料转化为记忆中的持久知识。这种转换还可以产生一个易于搜索和注释的计算机媒体库，甚至不需要成为学习过程的一部分
• 
  创造性地扩展所学知识（例如，在 增写、 解决问题等过程中）。

通过循序渐进的学习，你可以整合所有的知识来源，以选定的时间成本，按照严格定义的目标和优先事项，将信息转化为终身记忆。

渐进式学习的组成部分

针对不同形式的学习材料、媒体和目标，渐进式学习工具有很大不同。以下是渐进式学习的主要组成部分：

•  增量阅读
• 
  递增图像学习（或视觉学习）
•  增量视频
•  增量音频
• 
  增量邮件处理
• 
  渐进式创造性阐述（包括渐进式问题解决、渐进式写作等）

借助渐进式学习提供的丰富工具集，所有阅读、学习、查看、归档和注释功能都可以委托给 SuperMemo。这远远超出了标准学习的范围，包括个人笔记、家庭视频、音频和视频格式的讲座、YouTube 资料、家庭相册、日记、音频文件、扫描纸质资料等。

增量学习中最古老、最流行、最成熟的组成部分是增量阅读。我们将把增量阅读作为其他增量学习形式的综合介绍。

中断学习的价值

在渐进式学习中，我们经常会快速地从一个科目转到另一个科目。在一天的学习中，这种中断可能会发生很多次。当人们第一次了解这种循序渐进的方法时，他们会立刻问 "为什么要中断？彻底、坚持、把事情做到底不是人类努力的首要原则吗？

中断学习的三大优势是

• 
  提高记忆力：长期以来，间隔学习已被证明比集中学习效率高得多
• 
  改进学习选择/优先顺序：除非学习材料是由上级机构预先选定的，否则学生自己的选择需要确定优先顺序，这反过来又需要预览。预览是一种中断。定期中断可以在行进中确定优先顺序
• 
  提高注意力：每当注意力下降时，除了中断学习外，更换主题是最简单的补救措施

至于缺点......没有！简单地说：中断是可有可无的！的确，渐进式学习可能会导致 "学习不耐烦 "和 "渴望中断"，但是，除了表明一旦你采用渐进式学习，你可能再也不想回到传统的 "一次一本书 "的学习方式之外，这些从未被证明是有害的。尽管如此，你不应该忘记，学校也是渐进式的。只是规模稍小而已。当孩子们从地理课学习到物理课，或者当他们结束一天的课本学习时，学校会采用中断的方式。

一旦掌握了渐进学习的艺术，其优势将远远超过中断或间隔重复的优势。以下是一份简短的清单（详细讨论请参阅： 间隔重复）：渐进式学习的优势）。

• 
  大规模学习--你学到的知识比你想象中的记忆力更强
• 
  95%的知识保留率--几乎消除了遗忘问题
• 
  终生难忘--您的记忆将终生难忘（只要您坚持基于间隔重复的定期复习计划）。
• 
  全方位学习（而不是像学校那样只注重 2-4 个专业）
• 
  通过节制细节消耗和轻松纳入解释性材料（如词典和/或百科全书），帮助更好地理解所学内容
• 
  通过循序渐进的方法、间断学习、间隔学习和对新知识进行插槽式学习，更好地巩固知识结构。与人们普遍认为的相反，渐进式学习有助于在头脑中保持大局观
• 
  提高注意力，一次只关注一个问题，不遗漏任何细节，并通过不断更换学习材料来弥补注意力缺陷
• 
  创造力--通过以不可预知的顺序接触不同的主题，你的创造力会突飞猛进。例如，你可以在递增式问题解决或递增式写作的过程中使用它（本文是使用超级备忘录中的递增式写作工具撰写的）。
• 
  与混乱作斗争--在 SuperMemo 中更容易解决矛盾，例如，在处理声称和发现相互矛盾的新研究时。与 "现实生活 "中不断在矛盾中摇摆的记忆不同，SuperMemo 不能容忍信息差异。当你意识到需要确定真相的性质时，相互矛盾的材料就会趋于一致。
• 
  所有知识都有明确的优先次序
• 
  所有知识均可轻松搜索
• 
  所有知识均可量化（规模、保留率、工作量等）
• 
  无压力--没有什么比 "不会遗漏任何细节 "这种感觉更能解放你的头脑，让你高效地学习，你可以一次只专注于一个问题，而将其他问题留待以后解决。
• 
  乐趣--一旦你掌握了渐进式学习，它就会真正成为你一天中最精彩的部分，很少有其他世俗的乐趣能像新的有用知识一样给你带来满足感

简而言之，通过渐进式学习，你可以快速学习，获得大量知识，终身难忘，几乎记住所有所学知识，更好地理解事物，在各个方向上和谐发展，提高创造力，而这一切都会给你带来难以置信的乐趣！如果这听起来好得不像真的，请阅读下文或亲自尝试一下。详细说明请参阅渐进式学习的优势。

中断不是问题

在学习中，选择正确的学习资源是成功的第一步。一篇写得好的文章会让你在第一段甚至是第一句话中就了解到文章的基本思想。增量阅读最适合超文本或百科全书式的文章。理想的情况是，你读到的每个句子都对你的知识有贡献，而且如果没有后面的句子，这些句子也不是无用的。

想象一下，您想了解一些有关 Gamal Abdel Nasser 的信息。例如，您将从 Wikipedia 中导入一篇关于纳赛尔的文章到 SuperMemo 中。在第一句中，您会发现"Gamal Abdel Nasser（1918 - 1970）是埃及第二任总统"。如果您是第一次接触纳赛尔，您可能会很高兴只知道他是埃及总统，然后安全地跳转到其他文章的阅读。这样，您就可以推迟了解纳赛尔的历史作用，节省一些时间来了解希蒙-佩雷斯是谁。当您第二次看到纳赛尔的文章时，您可能会发现"他是继穆罕默德-纳吉布总统之后又一位被认为是历史上最重要的阿拉伯领导人之一"。这个知识点也是自成体系的，你可以耐心等待与纳赛尔的第三次相遇。当你下一次回来时，你可能会得出结论，另一篇关于纳赛尔的文章优先级较低："纳赛尔出生于亚历山大"。您可以安排在 2-3 年后审查这篇报道。也许您对纳赛尔或亚历山大的兴趣会增加，从而使这些知识变得有意义。如果没有，您可以随时删除或删除这样的摘录。或者，您可以跳过几个段落，摘录一个更重要的句子："1952年，纳赛尔领导了针对埃及法鲁克一世国王的军事政变"。 即使您以间隔几个月的时间来阅读有关纳赛尔的单个句子，您的知识也会逐步扩展并日益巩固（特别是如果您使用环形删除，这在较长的间隔中是必须的）。

当然，并不是所有的文章都适合渐进式阅读。例如，研究论文可能会向你提供详细的方法描述，而将结果和结论留到最后。在这种情况下，您可以摘录摘要，并将论文正文的阅读时间推迟到您认为摘要已经得到充分处理的那段时间。然后，如果您对这篇文章仍然感兴趣，您可以将方法安排到很久以后（是否阅读方法取决于文章的结论）。您可以将结果和讨论安排到不太遥远的时间点，然后继续阅读结论。

最难的文本可能不适合逐步阅读。例如，一段软件代码可能需要经过整体分析才能揭示出有用的含义。在这种情况下，当文本（此处为代码）出现在增量阅读过程中时，请对其进行分析并用语言表达你的结论。然后再对结论进行增量处理。你将根据哪些知识点是重要的，哪些是不稳定的，提出相应的问题。原始计算机代码仍可保留在您的收藏中，仅供参考。

在大学学习时，你会同时学习很多课程。这就是宏观版的增量阅读。很多人喜欢 "咔嚓 "电视频道，用电视机播放混乱版的增量视频。扎堆也许不是一种值得推荐的学习方式，但它不会让你的大脑一片空白。另一个例子是，有些人有同时阅读几本小说的习惯。他们对小说数量的限制来自于人类记忆的极限。小说的阅读有一个断点，如果在间隔较长的时间内分批阅读，由于记忆的衰退，超过这个断点就无法继续阅读。增量阅读基于超级记忆法，顾名思义，其受遗忘记忆的限制要小得多。在这个过程中，文章的数量可以达到十万篇，只要掌握基本技能，就不会感到困惑。

渐进式学习的复杂性

与经典的超级记忆法不同，渐进式学习需要大量的经验和培训才能变得有效。不过，一旦你熟练掌握了这种方法，你的投资将得到成倍的回报。

渐进式学习是近三十年来各种技术的整合。它仍处于成熟过程中，而且仍然相当复杂。它需要花费数月时间来培养技能。它需要你自己的策略，而这些策略可能需要数年才能成熟。此外，渐进式学习需要掌握 SuperMemo，而 SuperMemo 已针对专业用途进行了优化。因此，它对初学者并不友好。

用户抱怨说，SuperMemo 的学习曲线非常陡峭。他们是对的。SuperMemo 经过优化，让专业人士的生活变得简单。它让初学者的生活变得艰难，因为它绝不会为了时尚或营销价值而降低学习效率。以优先级队列为例。几乎每个人都会问，为什么价值最高的文章的优先级是 0%，而不是显而易见的 100%。他们问"为什么 SuperMemo 总是把事情颠倒过来？"。他们说得有道理。但是，没有一个专业用户会把输入 1、2、3 的便捷性换成输入 99、98 或 97 的便捷性。这些窘境延缓了超级记忆法的应用。不过，一旦你成为专家，你就会欣赏这种方法，并更有可能成为它的终身拥护者。

 增量读数

增量阅读简介

传统的线性阅读效率很低。这是因为文本中的各个片段有不同的重要性。有些应该跳过。其他则应按优先顺序阅读。旧式的书籍很快就会被超文本取代。超文本可以帮助你在任何特定时刻快速跳转到最重要的信息。超文本需要不同的写作风格。所有线性文本都假定读者熟悉前面的章节。这使得它们缺乏语境。在超文本中，单个文本变得与上下文无关，所有难懂的术语和概念主要通过附加的超链接来解释。就像网络帮助全球信息来源线性化一样，SuperMemo 可以帮助你在阅读任何你决定导入 SuperMemo 的线性材料时线性化。在使用 SuperMemo 阅读时，你会发现线性文本是由细分为段落和单个句子的章节组成的序列。SuperMemo可以帮助你对每个章节、段落或句子进行单独和独立的处理。

什么是增量阅读？

增量阅读是一种学习技术，它可以同时阅读数千篇文章而不会迷失方向。增量阅读首先从电子资源（如互联网）中导入文章。然后，学生从单篇文章中提取最重要的片段进行进一步复习。然后将摘录的片段转化为问题和答案。这些问题和答案又会被系统地复习和重复，从而最大限度地提高长期记忆能力。复习过程由经过验证的 间隔重复算法（即 超级记忆法）处理。

增量阅读可将电子文章转化为记忆中的持久知识：

• 
  输入：电子文章（例如从网上收集的文章）
• 
  输出：熟记的知识（以问答形式定期测验）。

在渐进式阅读中，你只读一小部分文章。读完一篇文章的一部分后，再读另一篇文章的一部分，等等。在超级记忆法中，你可以将文章的所有重要部分引入学习过程。这样，即使几个月后重新阅读，也不会担心忘记文章的主线。单篇文章的学习进度可能会比较慢，但通过减少对不太重要的文章的关注，把更多的时间花在对你的知识更有帮助的文章上，你的效率就会大大提高。难度较大的文章可以等你读完较简单的解释性文章后再读，等等。最后但并非最不重要的一点是，渐进式阅读能提高你的效率，因为它很有趣！你永远不会感到无聊。如果你不喜欢某篇文章，你可以只读一句，然后跳到其他文章。这样，你的注意力和专注力就会得到最大限度的发挥。

警告！增量阅读起初可能看起来很复杂。但是，一旦你掌握了它，你将开始一个超出你预期的学习过程。你会惊讶于自己的记忆所能处理和保留的数据量！请参阅 YouTube 上的 简单演示。

增量阅读的五项基本技能

增量阅读需要掌握一些技能，而这些技能只有在日积月累的使用中才能得到完善。本概述将仅帮助您掌握基本技能，并帮助您开始增量阅读。这 5 项基本技能是

• 
  将文章导入到超级备忘录中
• 
  阅读文章并将文章分解为易于处理的片段
• 
  将最重要的知识转化为问答材料
• 
  复习教材，以确保良好的记忆力
• 
  处理不可避免的信息泛滥问题

技能 1：导入物品

五种文章导入方法

起初，您可以将导入内容限制在单篇文章的简单复制和粘贴上。稍后，您会希望掌握从网上自动导入的方法，这样做有很多好处。

以下是超级备忘录中的 5 种主要文章导入方法：

• 
  Copy&Paste: 在浏览器（或允许复制文本的任何其他应用程序）中选择文章的文本，将其复制到剪贴板，然后单击一个按键将其复制到 SuperMemo 中：Ctrl+N
• 
  批量导入：使用专用的网络导入选项从支持的浏览器导入许多文章。这种方法可以避免重复导入，用参考文献标记您的导入，只导入选定的文本部分，并具有许多其他优点。
• 
  专用导入：SuperMemo 使从 Wikipedia （基本增量阅读材料的推荐来源）和 YouTube （ 增量视频材料的来源）导入材料变得特别容易。
• 
  本地文件导入：导入硬盘上已收集的文件
• 
  邮件导入：用于对邮件进行增量处理

 通过复制和粘贴导入

要使用复制和粘贴功能导入文章，请按照以下步骤操作：

• 
  在网页浏览器中选择导入的文本，然后将选中内容复制到剪贴板（例如，使用 Ctrl+C)
• 
  切换到超级备忘录（例如，使用 Alt+Tab)
• 
  在超级备忘录中，按 Ctrl+N 键（这相当于 Edit ：在主菜单上添加新文章）。SuperMemo 将创建一个新的 元素，并粘贴文章。你也可以使用 阅读工具栏上的 粘贴文章按钮（ ）。
• 
  可选择使用 Alt+P 来定义导入文章的 优先级。使用 Percent 字段，并记住 0% 是最高 优先级，而 100% 是最低 优先级。
• 
  可选择使用Ctrl+J指定首次审核时间间隔。例如：高优先级材料 1 天，低优先级材料 30 天

请记住，如果您在 Internet Explorer 中打开了许多文章，您可以通过 web import 最方便地导入它们，具体方法将在下一节中介绍。

导入多篇文章

将学习材料导入超级备忘录的最便捷方法是从网上直接导入多个页面。要同时导入多个页面，(1) 在 web 浏览器中打开它们、(2) 单击 清除栏上的 导入按钮（或按 Shift+F8 键，或选择 编辑 ；:Web import 上的主菜单）。为避免导入广告和其他垃圾信息，请在网页浏览器中选择要导入文本的部分内容，或选择 Parse 选项。如果在导入前选择文本，就不太可能需要过滤器来去除麻烦的 HTML（在导入的文章中按 F6 键即可）。如果您的浏览器不支持，则需要使用复制&粘贴方法，或在支持的网络浏览器（如 Microsoft Edge）中重新打开选定的文章。

有关从网络导入材料的详细信息，请参阅 网络导入

专用进口产品（维基百科、YouTube 和图片）

最受欢迎的学习资料来源是维基百科（用于增量阅读）和YouTube（用于增量视频）。您可以使用 Web import 对话框顶部的 Sources 工具栏选项快速选择这些来源（以及其他来源）。此外，专用过滤器将为方便学习导入的页面做好最佳准备。

图：从维基百科导入一篇关于温室效应的文章后（例如，使用Edit ：Web import (Shift+F8)），其全部文本将存储在一个 topic 中。

如果要导入图片，也可以使用图片快速选择按钮，该按钮将忽略在支持的 web 浏览器中打开的所有非图片页面。单击 Sources ：导入页面时（使用 Shift+F8 ），在 Web 导入对话框中单击Sources : Pictures。

更多详情，请参阅：Web import

从本地文件导入文章

如果要从本地驱动器上的文件导入文章，可以使用以下方法：

• 
  将 Internet Explorer 中的单篇文章添加到新的 元素中
  1. 
     在 Internet Explorer 中打开本地文章
  2. 
     导入方式与从网上导入文章的方式相同（例如，通过复制&粘贴导入或导入多篇文章）。
• 
  在现有的HTML组件中加入单篇文章
  1. 
     在 HTML 组件菜单中选择 File ：在 HTML 组件菜单中导入文件。
• 
  多篇文章（存储在一个文件夹中）
  1. 
     使用 File ：导入 ：文件和文件夹
  2. 
     指向包含文章的文件夹（确保该文件夹或其子文件夹中没有存储其他文件，否则它们也会被导入到 SuperMemo 中）

技能 2：阅读文章

以下是阅读文章的简化算法：

1. 
   选择文章：按照前面的解释导入文章，或使用 Learn (Ctrl+L)调出以前导入的文章。Learn 只显示过去导入的文章。如果您导入了一篇文章，并希望稍后在同一天的学习会话中显示，则必须将其放在未完成队列中（例如，Learning ：今天晚些时候，元素菜单，Ctrl+Shift+J等）。如果您导入了许多要在同一天处理的文章，则必须将它们全部放入未处理队列中。例如，在 浏览器中打开文章，然后选择 学习  ：将所有内容添加到未完成（或使用浏览器工具栏上的添加到未完成图标）。大多数情况下，您可以完全依赖 Learn 来优化文章的审核日程。
2. 
   单击文章进入编辑模式，您可以在其中修改文本、选择片段等。如果文本难以处理（例如难以选择， 摘录未正确标记等），可选择使用过滤器 (F6)
3. 
   从顶部或最后阅读点开始阅读文章
4. 
   提取文本：如果在文章中遇到有趣的文本，请选中它并在阅读栏上选择记住提取（或按Alt+X）。此操作将把提取的片段作为独立的小文章引入学习过程。如果您想指定新 提取的 优先级，请选择 阅读  ：计划摘录 ( )，而不是 记住摘录。此外，如果您觉得文章较难，希望稍后再阅读一些片段，请使用 Reading  提取这些片段：安排摘录，并提供一个复习时间间隔，该时间间隔将反映您认为您将更好地理解所摘录片段的时间。
5. 
   可选择使用 Delete before cursor (Alt+\) 。这将删除您已阅读的文本，清理文章，删除垃圾，并帮助处理难以处理的 HTML。
6. 
   如果读到的片段似乎不重要，可选择将其选中（例如用鼠标）并删除（例如使用 Del 键），或使用 忽略样式将其标记。要将文本标记为 忽略，请选择 阅读  ：忽略组件菜单、单击 Read 工具栏上的 Ignore text 按钮 ( )，或直接按 Ctrl+Shift+I 键。
7. 
   如果所选片段不包括所有重要的阅读上下文，还可以手动添加这些上下文。例如，如果您正在学习历史，您可以从一篇关于林肯的文章中提取以下片段：1862年9月22日，林肯总统发布了《解放奴隶宣言》，这是世界历史上最重要的信息之一。他于 1863 年 1 月 1 日签署了该宣言。 如果您想提取与签署《解放奴隶宣言》有关的片段，您需要将 He 更改为 Lincoln 和 it 更改为 Emancipation Proclamation 以便您的独立片段可以理解：林肯于 1863 年 1 月 1 日签署了《解放奴隶宣言》。 您可以使用组件菜单中的参考选项，轻松为您的摘录添加上下文（请参阅：参考）。Reference 添加的上下文将自动添加到给定文章的所有 摘录中。例如，选择您希望作为所有 摘录的参考文献标题的文本，然后在 HTML 参考文献  上选择 参考文献  ：标题（或按 Alt+T 键）。该文本将显示在所有摘录的底部（默认使用参考粉红色字体）。
8. 
   可选择标记最后阅读点：一旦您决定在文章结束前停止阅读，请将最后处理的片段标记为 阅读点（例如，使用 Ctrl+F7 或选择 阅读  ： 读取点  ：从 HTML 组件菜单设置读取点）。下次你再回到这篇文章时，SuperMemo 将高亮显示你的阅读点，你就可以从上次停止阅读文章的位置继续阅读。要转到当前阅读点，请按Alt+F7。如果你忘记设置阅读点，SuperMemo 将在你上次提取或上次高亮显示的位置留下阅读点。
9. 
   转到下一篇文章：阅读完一篇文章的一部分后，选择 Learn 或 Next repetition 继续阅读其他文章。这些按钮位于 元素窗口的底部。您也可以使用回车，只要文本中的选区不是空的（例如标记为阅读点），或者您已经离开编辑模式（例如使用回车），该按钮就会起作用。如果没有选择文本，Enter 将在文本中添加新行（与标准文本编辑器的情况相同）。
10. 
    可选择确定下一次审核日期（例如使用 Ctrl+Shift+R ），或设置文章的新 优先级（例如使用 Alt+P ）。
11. 
    在增量阅读中，中断阅读是一种规则，而不是例外！只要多加练习，您就会很快习惯这种并不自然的状态，并学会欣赏增量方法的力量。中断的主要作用是防止阅读质量下降。使用以下标准来决定何时停止阅读文章：
    • 
      时间不够：如果您在某一天还有很多文章需要审阅，而您的时间已经不多了，那么请缩短您的增量。一段时间后，匆忙将成为一种常态，您将倾向于只阅读每篇文章的 1-2 段，只深入研究那些对您的知识有重大影响的突破性文章。
    • 
      无聊：如果文章容易让您感到无聊，请停止阅读。你的注意力总是有限的。如果你的注意力不集中，那么在休息片刻后再继续阅读，你会从文章中获益更多。继续阅读你尚未厌倦的文章。如果 SuperMemo 将下一次复习安排在你认为太晚的日期，请使用 Ctrl+J 或 Shift+Ctrl+R 调整下一次复习日期。
    • 
      缺乏理解：如果您认为需要更多知识才能理解文章，请推迟复习（例如，使用 Ctrl+J 或 Shift+Ctrl+R 并将下次复习安排在 100 天左右）。如果您认为自己已经导入了具有相关解释性知识的文章，可以搜索这些文章（例如，使用 Ctrl+F 搜索）。找到这些文章后，您可以 (1) 执行子集审查，或 (2) 将文章添加到未完成队列，以便在同一天阅读，或 (3) 提前阅读文章（例如，在浏览器中，您可以执行：Learning :审查所有，或 Learning ：添加到未完成，或 Advance ：主题）。如果您尚未导入任何说明性文章，现在就可以导入（例如，按照前面的说明搜索网络并导入文章）。请注意，您可以在超级备忘录中选择一段文字，然后使用 Ctrl+F3 搜索百科全书或字典，以查找有关特定主题的更多资料。
    • 
      较低优先级：将较低优先级的文章分成小部分阅读，从而减少分配给低优先级主题的总体时间。
    • 
      超负荷：如果您有很长的文章要阅读，您自然会分成较小的部分来阅读
12. 
    完成整篇文章的阅读并提取所有有趣的片段后，请在 Done! ( )上选择learnbar 。您也可以按 Shift+Ctrl+Enter 键，在 Commander 中选择 Done! ，或选择 Learning  ：完成元素菜单。完成！将删除文章并删除其内容（不删除提取的材料）。Done 将删除一篇无子文章（即没有提供任何有趣提取的文章）。使用Done将大大减少文集的大小，并在搜索文本时消除 "死点击"。

图： 阅读工具栏位于 元素窗口的底部。它具有用于增量阅读的选项。

技能 3：提取片段、问题和答案

 提取文本

在传统阅读过程中，我们经常会用荧光笔标记重要段落。在 SuperMemo 中，这些段落可以被提取为单独的微型文章，随后用于加深记忆。每个提取出来的段落或章节都将成为一个新的元素，它将采用与原文相同的阅读算法。使用 Extract ( )提取重要片段和单句。您可以使用 Alt+X、 Learnbar 上的 Extract 或 Reading  ：记住组件菜单上的提取。

 添加参考资料

在增量阅读中，您总是需要快速恢复一个问题或一段文字的上下文。快速恢复上下文的最简单方法是通过引用。当您生成 摘录和 冻结删除时，引用会从 元素传播到另一个元素。由于从给定文本生成的所有子元素都标有引用，因此您永远不必担心丢失问题的上下文。从网络导入时，引用会自动添加。您也可以逐字段手动定义引用。下图中的参考文献示例用粉红色表示。详情请见参考资料。

图：增量阅读的典型快照。在学习温室效应时，学生摘录了以下片段："在没有温室效应和大气层的情况下，地球表面 14 °C (57 °F) 的平均温度可能低至 -18 °C (-0.4 °F)，即地球的黑体温度"。摘录的片段将继承右侧的插图以及文章参考文献。学生可以按回车键继续阅读另一篇文章。右侧的图片存储在本地图像 注册表（用户硬盘上）中，可重复用于说明其他文章或问题。

Cloze：生成问题

超级记忆法会告诉你，提取重要片段并在以后复习它们，会对你的记忆能力产生极大的影响。但是，它也会告诉你，一旦复习的间隔时间超过 200-300 天，阅读和重读（被动复习）往往会导致记忆不充分。因此，您迟早需要将文本转换为具体的问题。为此，您将使用 cloze 删除。

掐头去尾是指使用省略号（[...]）替换句子部分内容的项目。

 例如

问题塞拉利昂的首都是[...]

答案：弗里敦

在增量阅读中，环形删除是从具有句子或简单段落形式的主题中生成的。

要创建 冻结删除，请执行以下操作：

1. 
   确保 topic 仅包含一个短句（例如，The capital of Sierra Leone is Freetown)
2. 
   在句子中选择一个重要的关键词（例如，Freetown)
3. 
   进行以下操作之一：
   • 
     单击 Read 工具栏上的 Cloze 按钮（ ），或
   • 
     按 Alt+Z 或
   • 
     从 HTML 组件菜单中选择 阅读  ：从 HTML 组件菜单中记住 "掐头去尾"。

Remember cloze 将句子转换成一个带有答案的具体问题。通过使用cloze，您将从被动复习转变为主动记忆。您不必等到被动式复习中的某个段落或句子变得难以回忆时才去回忆。对于最重要的材料，您可以在找到需要牢记的信息后立即创建循环项目。

下面的示例展示了如何有效使用 Remember cloze。

图：提取句子中的两个数字作为生成问题和答案的关键词（温度为 14 °C 和 -18 °C）

图：在增量阅读过程中提取的句子（见上一张图片）被转换为冷冻删除。(即形成增量阅读最终产品的问答对，用于加强对给定事实的记忆（此处：地球上没有大气层的假设温度））。原摘录中的图片已被继承（在右侧）。问题底部的粉红色文本是从维基百科导入文章时自动生成的参考文献。

单击 Cloze 时，您不会看到新生成的 cloze 。只有选定的关键字会改变颜色。这将加快您的工作速度。但是，如果您想立即编辑新创建的 冻结删除，请选择 返回按钮（ ），或按下 Alt+Left 箭头。这样就可以添加上下文线索、缩短文本、改进措辞等。

 简化问题

在将摘录转换为问题和答案时，应确保问题简单明了，并包含相关背景。例如，如果您从有关互联网历史的阅读中摘录了以下片段：

1969 年，美国高级研究计划局 (ARPA) 签订合同，将美国西南部大学（加州大学洛杉矶分校、斯坦福研究所、加州大学旧金山分校和犹他大学）的四台主要计算机连接起来，从而启动了互联网。

您可能会发现，当回顾 间隔时间变得足够长时，您可能实际上无法回忆起 ARPA 机构的名称，甚至忘记互联网开始的年份。这时，您可以选择一个重要的关键字，例如 1969 ，然后使用 Remember cloze 生成下面的一对问答：

问题：[...]互联网是在美国高级研究计划局（ARPA）的一份合同下启动的，该合同将美国西南部大学（加州大学洛杉矶分校、斯坦福研究所、加州大学旧金山分校和犹他大学）的四台主要计算机连接起来。

答案：1969 年

在学习过程中，您需要对上述项目进行人工编辑，使其更加简洁易懂：

问题：互联网是在[...]（年份） ARPA 机构签发的一份合同下启动的。

答案：1969 年

 或者更好：

问题互联网始于[...]（年份）

答案：1969 年

至于在编辑过程中 "丢失 "的宝贵信息，可以（但不是必须）通过 Remember cloze 生成的单独问题独立学习。

对上述问题进行的微型编辑为新创建的问答对增添了以下益处：

1. 
   更明确的问题目的：通过使用红色 (年份)提示，强调了问题是关于互联网开始的年份这一事实。
2. 
   引力：去掉多余的信息，就不会把时间浪费在不可能被记住的信息上（只有主动回忆起的材料才会被记住多年）。您在回答问题时，千万不要把重点放在哪些大学最初是由早期的互联网连接起来的。如果您认为这些信息也很重要，那么您将使用原始摘录来制作更多loze项目，通过在答案字段中为这些大学命名的方式，将注意力完全集中在这些大学上（如果您不同意，请阅读：loze项目）：制定知识的 20 条规则）。
3. 
   可理解性："the ARPA agency"短语可能违背了您在小学学到的语法规则，但它远比 the ARPA更容易理解。在超级备忘录中，可理解性比死板的语法或拼写规则更重要！

技能 4：重复和复习

超级记忆法的基础是重复。您将不时复习所学材料，以确保防止遗忘。

如果您以前从未尝试过超级备忘录，您需要掌握标准重复的诀窍，如此处所述。

在增量阅读中，你的复习将基于与经典超级记忆法类似的原则。主要区别在于

• 
  在学习过程中，将阅读新文章与复习项目相结合
• 
  您的项目大多会采用cloze删除的形式，即句子中缺少[...]部分所提出的问题（例如，离太阳最近的行星是[...])
• 
  由于整个学习过程是渐进的，您的克洛泽删除通常会以未完成的形式出现

经过增量处理的文章将接受定期审查/阅读。当您在一段时间后继续阅读文章时，您将进入新的章节，用 Alt+X 将新获得的智慧提取到单独的 elements 中（即 Remember extract）。通常，您将使用 Delete before cursor (Alt+\) 删除已处理文章的残余内容。

决定 (1) 重复问答材料和 (2) 复习阅读材料的时间的算法类似，但不完全相同。最重要的是，默认情况下，所有的重复和文章展示都是以间隔递增的方式进行的。在递增阅读中，你会看到不断有新文章流入你的藏书。未经处理的材料需要与新输入的材料竞争。间隔时间的增加可以确保您的旧资料如果不及早处理，就会被降低优先级。处理速度取决于您的时间和材料本身的价值。那些无聊的、写得不好的、对你的工作或成长不太重要的文章，会得到你较少的关注，甚至在你设法通过一小部分文本之前，就可能进入漫长的审阅间隔。这是大量新信息流入您的藏书和记忆中不可避免的副作用。不过，间隔和优先级很容易调整。如果您的优先级发生变化，您可以修改处理重要文章的方式。在审阅时，您可以不间断地阅读整篇文章，也可以在较短的间隔内将其带回审阅。您可以手动更改优先级（例如，使用Alt+P）。您还可以使用搜索工具（例如，Ctrl+F）查找更多您认为被忽略的主题文章。 您可以通过更改优先级来重新安排大量文章的优先级。您可以缩短文章的间隔时间，或在需要时审查所有文章（请参阅：子集审查）。

审核问题和答案（例如，冻结删除）的算法相当复杂，并且限制了您对重复时间的影响（请参阅：超级记忆算法）。这是为了确保您实现高水平的知识保留，而人工干预可能会影响知识保留。不过，确定主题的间隔的算法要简单得多，完全由您控制。每篇文章都有特定的优先级。优先级决定了哪些文章先被审核，哪些文章可以推迟，以防时间不够。每篇文章还会分配一个称为A-Factor的数字，该数字决定间隔的增加。例如，如果A-Factor为 2，则每次审查间隔都将翻倍。 优先级和 A 因子是自动设置的，但您可以随时手动更改。Priorities 和 A-Factors 是根据文本的长度、处理方式、推迟或提前的方式以及许多其他因素启发式确定和修改的。您可以按Alt+P键更改文章的优先级和A-因素。您还可以使用Shift+Ctrl+向上箭头和Shift+Ctrl+向下箭头来增加或减少元素的优先级。 请注意，与项目相关的A-因素不能由用户更改，因为它们是项目难度的反映，决定了最佳重复间隔的长度（请参阅：遗忘索引）。

您可以通过手动调整审稿间间隔来控制文章审稿的时间。使用 Ctrl+J (Reschedule) 或 Shift+Ctrl+R (Execute repetition) 来确定下一次审阅的日期。Ctrl+J 将递增当前的 间隔时间，而 Shift+Ctrl+R 将首先执行 重复，然后设置新的间隔时间。例如，如果您当前的间隔是 100，而您在重新安排中指定的值是 3，那么新的重复日期将在 3 天后设置，而最后一次重复日期不会改变（新的间隔将是 103）。如果使用 Execute repetition 执行同样的操作，新的 interval 将是 3，最后一次重复日期将设置为今天。换句话说，重新安排会增加间隔（也可以缩短间隔），而执行重复则会设置间隔的长度（同时在学习过程中留下执行重复的痕迹）。请注意，Reschedule (Ctrl+J) 在 Next repetition 阶段将首先完成重复，其效果与 Execute repetition (Shift+Ctrl+R) 相同。要在学习过程中延迟重复，请使用重复周期的任何早期阶段。

在大量超负荷的增量阅读过程中，您经常希望在某一天（如考试前）集中精力阅读某一特定主题。为此，请阅读无价的工具：子集学习。

 摘要

• 
  使用 Learn 按钮处理、学习和回顾所有知识
• 
  项目的审查由超级记忆算法处理。请将您的项目分好级、列好表，并用诚实的优先级标记它们。剩下的就交给超级记忆法吧
• 
  对主题/文章的审核也会以间隔增加的方式进行，不过，您始终可以使用执行重复（Shift+Ctrl+R）手动设置下一个日期。确保将您的热门文章标记为高优先级。否则，它们很快就会从视野中消失

技能 5：处理大量知识

在增量阅读中，您可能会迅速导入和生成超过您有效处理能力的学习材料。为了确保您能迅速处理超负荷，SuperMemo 使用了优先队列。

使用Alt+P（ 优先级  ：通过元素菜单上的 "修改"），您可以将每个元素的优先级设置为 0% 至 100% 不等。请注意，0% 对应的是高优先级！

默认情况下，未完成的重复内容将从高到低自动排序。这样，如果您无法完成每天的学习任务，受影响的只会是优先级较低的材料。此外，默认情况下，在工作日开始时（即第一次运行超级备忘录时），前几天未完成的学习材料将自动推迟（同样，优先级高的学习材料受到的影响最小）。

阅读有关优先队列的文章，了解更多信息：

1. 
   手动排序 元素、
2. 
   定义排序标准、
3. 
   关闭自动排序和自动延期等功能。

有关处理超载的更多选项，请参见

• 
  "推迟 "对话框用于推迟部分学习材料和定义推迟标准
• 
  Mercy 将多余的学习材料分散到一段时间内（或在放假前提前学习材料等）。
• 
  要了解有关不同选择的更多信息，另请参阅：推迟、提前和宽恕。

 其他基本技能

增量阅读中的知识演变

《超级记忆法》中的知识演变将遵循三大原则

• 
  降低复杂性--文章将转换为段落集。段落将分解为独立的句子和语句。句子将被缩短，以最大限度地提高信息与文字的比例，等等。
• 
  主动回忆--所有信息最终都将转化为主动回忆材料，如问答对、删减、图片识别测试、声音识别测试等。这样做是为了最大限度地回忆知识
• 
  渐进性--所有变化都将根据可用时间的比例、所选材料的优先级以及记忆痕迹逐渐增强的强度逐步进行。SuperMemo 中的渐进式学习将帮助你在最短的时间内获得最大的记忆效果。请看学习中断的价值

 使用图片

为了获得更多的信息、记忆线索和纯粹的学习乐趣，您在超级记忆法中逐步阅读的文章可以配上取自文章内容或其他来源的有意义的图片。按Ctrl+F8选择文章中嵌入的图片。

如果您碰巧从维基百科导入，SuperMemo 16 或更高版本可以用全分辨率图像而不仅仅是拇指来说明一篇文章及其所有摘录和胶卷。

图： 下载图像 (Ctrl+F8) 可下载 HTML 组件的 HTML 代码中引用的远程图像，并将其导入图像 注册表。在图片中，正在从 Wikipedia 下载用于说明 Donald Trump 文章的图片。起初，图片是作为拇指从浏览器呈现器中截取的。同时下载全尺寸图片。在列出的 34 张图片中，有 5 张已经下载完毕（如标题所示），另外 2 张仍在下载中（用 → 标记，后面是当前的下载进度，即下载完成 27.9% 和 38.2%）。您可以用大拇指来说明 元素，也可以等到完整图像下载完毕。在平均连接速度下，图像的下载速度通常比您查看图像的速度还要快。换句话说，与超级备忘录 16 不同，您通常不需要等待下载图像。插入将插入图片以说明文章及其所有摘录和胶卷（已准备好插入的图片用✔标记）。尚未插入的拇指/图片可在包含相应图片的所有文本中下载。

更多信息，请参阅 可视化学习

 主题与项目

在超级记忆法中，你可以看到以两种基本形式呈现的信息片段：

• 
  专题：这些通常是您想要阅读的较长篇文章
• 
  项目：这些通常是您需要回答的具体问题

Topics 和 items 以不同的方式在不同的时间呈现。Topics 保存您想学习的知识（即您想阅读的内容），而 items 保存您想记住的知识（即您已经掌握但可能忘记的知识）。

 主题

SuperMemo 中的主题是您要学习的一篇文章、其部分内容或一个句子。主题也可以是图片、视频、音乐等形式。与项目不同，主题不会测试你的知识。它们仅用于被动阅读、观看或聆听。短文主题用于生成克隆删除。主题参与增量学习过程。一旦它们被转换为项目，它们通常会被删除（即在学习中被忽略）或完成（即从学习过程中完全删除）。Done! 和 Dismiss 都必须由用户执行（即不能自动执行）。

 使用主题

主题在 Contents 中用绿色 T 图标（ ）标出。主题可以很长（整篇文章），也可以很短（单句）。这就是使用主题的方法：

• 
  从头阅读主题
• 
  如果您发现了一些有趣的信息，请将其提取出来（例如使用 Alt+X ）；提取出来的信息将形成一个新的独立主题；新主题将更简短，处理方式将与所有其他主题相同
• 
  根据主题的优先顺序和可用时间，决定要读到什么程度（例如，如果赶时间，就快速中断；如果主题非常重要，就全部读完）； - 根据主题的优先顺序和可用时间，决定要读到什么程度（例如，如果赶时间，就快速中断；如果主题非常重要，就全部读完
• if you finish reading the topic, execute Done! (e.g. Ctrl+Shift+Enter); this will delete the topic without deleting the material that it produced
• only if the topic is as short as a single sentence, create cloze deletions (e.g. with Alt+Z)
• return to reading the topic next time it comes for review

On longer topics you read and extract, on very short topics you generate cloze deletions.

Items

Item in SuperMemo is a piece of knowledge that you want to remember. It usually has a question&answer form. The main difference between an item and a topic is that an item actively tests your memory (e.g. with a question), while a topic is used for passive review only (e.g. for reading, viewing, watching, etc.).

Concepts

SuperMemo 17 introduced a new element type: concept (denoted in Contents with an orange lightbulb icon ()). Such an element represents an important idea or subject. Multiple topics and items (or even tasks) can be linked to a concept. The link associates them with the idea/subject represented by the concept. The concept-based network of links is called a concept map. It forms a skeleton for the spreading activation which underlies neural review.

Tasks

In addition to items, topics and concepts, you can also use tasks in incremental learning. Tasks are jobs sorted by Value/Time or Value/Price ratio.

For an extensive comparison of items, topics, concepts and tasks in SuperMemo, see: Element types in SuperMemo.

Reading overload

Overload occurs when the student has more outstanding items or topics to review than (s)he can handle. Few users can sustain more than 200 item repetitions per day. When the Outstanding parameter in the Statistics window starts going above that number, overload is likely.

Overload can best be handled with Auto-postpone. However, a one-time big load can be resolved efficiently with Postpone (delaying all elements), or Mercy (spreading all review in time).

You can also postpone a specific topic with all its extracts using the following method:

1. Go to the topic in question
2. Press Ctrl+Space to open the topic, its extracts, and clozes in the browser
3. Choose Process browser> : Postpone on the browser menu

Note that you may need to use Learning : Locate extracts on the element menu if you have moved portions of your learning material to other branches.

See also:

• Priority queue
• Mercy
• Postpone

Auto-sort and auto-postpone

As long as you prioritize your learning material well, you should make your life easier by checking the following 2 options:

• Learn : Sorting : Auto-sort repetitions that results in sorting your outstanding queue by priority at the start of each day.
• Learn : Postpone : Auto-postpone that results in postponing outstanding repetitions of lower priority at that start of each day. It ensures you do not get overloaded, and it ensures that you minimize delays for top priority material.

Auto-postpone always leaves a number of top-priority elements in the queue. The purpose of the postpone is to get rid of the main mass of low-priority material and focus on top-priority material. You are most likely to use Postpone after a day of learning, while Auto-postpone is executed before your learning day begins. This is why it never affects today's material, and does not postpone top-priority material from previous days. If you have Auto-postpone checked on the menu, you will always start the day with all the repetitions scheduled for that day, and a number of unexecuted top-priority repetitions from previous days. Even though Auto-postpone increases the intervals and reduces the retention of low-priority material, it also makes you benefit from the spacing effect. Research shows that longer intervals may paradoxically increase the speed of learning (up to a certain point). This comes from the fact that the default retention in SuperMemo (around 95%) is higher than the retention that delivers the largest number of items remembered per unit of time invested.

You can start with default settings of the sorting criteria, however, if you feel you make insufficient progress with items (e.g. high forgetting index), you can reduce the proportion of topics. If the inflow of new material is too slow, you can increase the proportion of topics. If your priorities are imperfect, increase the degree of randomization. If you think you miss too many high priority items (see: Toolkit : Statistics : Analysis : Use : Priority protection from the main menu), reduce the randomization. By trial and error, you will arrive at your optimum. Even after you find your optimum, keep experimenting with different randomization and topic levels. This will help you avoid various cognitive biases that develop through the routine of learning. It may also be helpful to execute random review from time to time (just to get a general feel of your overall progress).

With Auto-sort and Auto-postpone, you will nearly never have to worry about material overload. Each time you start SuperMemo for the first time on a given day, it will first postpone repetitions that you failed to execute on previous days. It will use default postpone criteria which you can always modify (e.g. with Learn : Postpone : All elements). After postponing the backlog of repetitions, SuperMemo will sort today's repetitions and those that were left outstanding by Auto-postpone. Auto-sort will use sorting criteria specified earlier with Learn : Sorting : Sorting criteria.

With Auto-postpone and Auto-sort, you can always begin your day with a manageable portion of material sorted by priority. Your learning sequence will be optimized with no action on your part (i.e. no options to choose, and no keys to press).

Overload hints

• With or without Auto-postpone, your only sure remedy against forgetting is always the same: complete your repetitions!
• Auto-postpone affects all days except for today. If you have low-priority topics scheduled for today, Auto-postpone will delay them only tomorrow and only if you do not review them today. This is to ensure that low-priority topics also have a chance to enter repetitions as determined by your Randomization/Prioritization balance in the sorting criteria
• In the Postpone dialog, Skip the following number of top priority elements skips only elements that were skipped by Skip conditions on the Parameters tab. It will not protect elements from being postponed if they are not protected by the postpone criteria. Whatever the value of this parameter, you can still have all your elements postponed. You can best view it as a pro-postpone parameter that is used to force extra postpones (not an anti-postpone parameter that protects your from extra postpones). Skip here means "skip postpone protections" not "skip postpones"
• Simulate in Postpone can be used to tell you how well your current postpone criteria work. It ignores Skip the following number of top priority elements because this parameter needs no simulation (it will always enforce skipping the said number of elements protected from Postpone by the postpone criteria)

Subset review

Subset review is a review of a portion of the learning material (e.g. before an exam). The portion may be identified with search, by branch selection in Contents, by concept group, and other means that determine a subset of elements. The reviewed subset material may be sorted by its sequence in the knowledge tree (Contents), priority, difficulty, interval, recency, etc.

For more, see Subset learning

Hints and tips

Importing articles

• Importing articles from Wikipedia is easiest:
  • to search for Wikipedia articles press Ctrl+F3, type in some keywords, choose Wikipedia, press Enter
  • to search for an article on a subject you are reading about, select a portion of text and press Ctrl+F3. Choose Wikipedia as described above
  • to import Wikipedia articles from Internet Explorer, press Shift+Ctrl+W (Edit : Web import : Wikipedia on the main menu)
• To quickly import many articles from the web, do the following:
  1. find the articles (e.g. with Google),
  2. open them in Internet Explorer,
  3. in SuperMemo, use Shift+Ctrl+A (Edit : Web import : All from the main menu)
• To quickly search for articles on the subject you are reading about, select a portion of text, press Ctrl+F3 and choose Google
• To type your own notes in SuperMemo use Alt+N (Edit : Add a note on the main menu)
• If you would like to store pictures locally on your hard disk (in the image registry), and make them proliferate in incremental reading (e.g. show up in all extracts even if the extracts do not include the picture, etc.), then you must import the pictures to image components using one of the following methods:
  • to import pictures included in a single article use Ctrl+F8 (Download images on the component menu), select images and click Insert
  • to import pictures from the web, use Copy on the picture in your Internet browser and then press Shift+Ins or Ctrl+V in SuperMemo to paste the picture (if the picture does not paste, press Esc a few times to get to the display mode and try Shift+Ins or Ctrl+V again)
  • to import many pictures from many articles in Internet Explorer, use Edit : Web import : Pictures) and choose Local images only or Page of images as the import mode
  • to optimize the tiling of many pictures after the import, use Components : Tile components on the element menu
  • see also: Adding pictures to SuperMemo
• Wikipedia has recently changed from PNG to MathML default in displaying mathematical formulas. To display formulas in SuperMemo, log in to Wikipedia, choose Preferences : Appearance, go to the Math section and choose PNG. Click Save to save the preferences. You will be able to illustrate your elements with PNG formulas and make them proliferate down the knowledge tree with extracts and clozes
• Instead of scanning paper books and doing OCR for the sake of incremental reading, always begin with looking for electronic equivalents. In most basic areas of knowledge, there are multiple sources of learning materials available. There are fewer and fewer cases where you need to do any scanning. These days, you can even be finicky and search for HTML texts to replace your nice PDF materials (to avoid the pain of converting PDF to HTML)
• Some texts rich in pictures and tables may be handled with difficulty by SuperMemo (the older the SuperMemo, the more difficulty you may experience). It may be very useful to learn to use HTML filters (press F6). Some of the problems stem from bugs in Internet Explorer that SuperMemo employs to display and edit texts formatted in HTML. This particularly refers to older versions of Internet Explorer (e.g. IE 6.0). It is therefore highly recommended you install Internet Explorer 7 or later to make your life easier
• If you are pressed by exam deadlines and still not too fluent with incremental reading, it would make more sense to do some of your old and new learning in parallel. For example, 30% incremental reading and 70% traditional learning. You are bound to make many mistakes in strategy and the discovery process may take longer than until the exam. At the beginning you will have a big overhead cost (strategy, material selection, formulation, learning SuperMemo itself, etc.). It would not then be surprising if your performance on the exam actually dropped at your first try! You could pick a couple of chapters that you particularly enjoy and use them in your incremental learning practice. You would then process the rest of the material using your old methods. You cannot possibly embark on a massive conversion of textbooks into SuperMemo material before you get the feel of how to do it right! It can backfire and discourage the use of SuperMemo. As always, proceed carefully and incrementally

Inflow of new articles

• SuperMemo uses 2 basic element types: topics (articles) and items (questions and answers). Those are treated differently in the review process. Topics represent what you want to know, while items hold what you know. To better understand the difference, see: Topics vs. Items
• Keep your topics/articles in check. Use your sorting criteria to make sure you get a solid dose of daily items/questions in addition to your reading. High topic overload may slow your item flow and damage the active recall process. High topic load will make SuperMemo resemble traditional reading where your retention is unacceptably low. You can decide your optimum ratio on the basis of time needed for repetitions. For example, 5:1 item:topic ratio would probably still make you spend more time on reading than on reviewing. Increase that ratio to increase your retention, reduce the ratio temporarily if you need to do a great deal of reading. If you are not sure, set items:topics to anywhere between 3:1 and 8:1. Still too hard to decide? Review 5 items for each topic in the outstanding queue.
• Toolkit : Statistics : Statistics : Protection can be used to inspect your progress in processing top priority material on a given day
• Toolkit : Statistics : Analysis : Use : Protection can be used to inspect the degree of processing of your top priority material over time

Reading

• While reading, you can display the Read toolbar in the control bar by clicking its tab (). The toolbar may be helpful before you learn to use the keyboard to access all its functions
• If you do not like the large spacing between the lines when you press Enter, use Shift+Enter. Remember this trick! Many users struggle for months with line spacing only to discover this precious tip. This tricky behavior is by Internet Explorer, not by SuperMemo
• Once you finish processing the article, use Done! () on the learnbar or Learning : Done from the element menu (e.g. with Ctrl+Shift+Enter followed by all necessary confirmations with Enter). This will clean up your learning process without affecting the work you have done (all extracts and clozes will remain in the learning process). Done! deletes (1) the article, (2) its repetition history, (3) its components, etc. However, it leaves the original empty element as a source of reference and as a holder for the derived structure of extracts and cloze deletions. Done! is executed at the moment when you believe you have completed reading and processing a given piece of text. This usually means skipping all unimportant parts and extracting all important parts of the article. You repeat Done! on all topic extracts generated from the article. You will quickly discover that keeping the original articles for reference only clutters your collection, increases its size and produces an excess of search hits. Getting rid of the original is usually the preferred action. You can always get to the original article on the net using its reference link
• If you return to an interrupted article in the learning process, the cursor in the text is set on the last-processed text. That text selection is called a read-point. When leaving the article, you can also manually set the read-point' at the place where you interrupted reading. Choose Ctrl+F7 to set the read-point, or click the set read-point button () on the Read toolbar
• Highlighting texts automatically sets the read-point
• Use Clear read-point () on the Read toolbar, or press Ctrl+Shift+F7, to remove the read-point
• Enter is the default key used when progressing through the learning cycle. When a read-point is selected and you press Enter, instead of inserting a new line, SuperMemo will automatically begin or resume repetitions. This will also be the case if you make any selections in the text. Enter will play its usual function only if there are no selections in the text. Although using Del and Enter instead of just Enter in these circumstances may seem cumbersome, you will quickly find this behavior indispensable in learning. If you still do not like this Enter behavior despite giving it a try, set Allow Read-Point Enter=0 in [BIN]\supermemo.ini
• If you use Delete before cursor, you may be annoyed by lack of Undo. However, if you mistakenly delete important texts (e.g. when using After instead of Before), you can find a temporary backup of the deleted text in collection's [TEMP] folder (the file is named Last text portion delete with element number and delete time appended). The backup file is deleted only at Repair collection or at File : Tools : Garbage, i.e. it will not disappear if you quit the element
• Horizontal lines can be used to split articles. If you insert a horizontal line and call Split article, the article will be split into separate elements. Split article is also available from the Commander. To insert a horizontal line press Shift+Alt+H or type <hr>, select it, and press Ctrl+Shift+1 (or choose Text : Convert : Parse HTML on the component menu). Parse HTML () is also available on the learnbar
• Use Ctrl+] and Ctrl+[ to change the size of the font in the selected text

Generating clozes

• In incremental reading, you should always strive at converting passive texts into active questions. Ideally, all passive texts should be deleted when done with. All interference from "outside world" makes SuperMemo less precise. Passive texts provide little extra help in learning. At the same time, they provide interference, and should only be used to generate new clozes (or for reference)
• When you press Alt+Z, the currently selected keyword in the current topic is marked as clozed. The newly created item is not visible (i.e. you will not immediately see the answer nor the deletion brackets). You can see the newly created item by pressing Alt+Left arrow. Use that key to edit the newly created cloze (e.g. to add context clues, shorten the text, improve the wording, etc.). However, if possible, you should do such mini-jobs incrementally, i.e. on the next encounter with the clozed item
• If you want to cloze more than one keyword, before you apply Cloze, you should make sure that the processed statement or paragraph is as simple as possible. You should try to use only one-sentence extracts to generate cloze deletions! Some newcomers dislike incremental learning at first. Monster cloze deletions are a chief reason for their negative feelings. Simplifying the parent paragraph to a simple statement will produce simple clozes that will require little processing. Using Cloze on complex texts multiplies the cost of re-editing when simplifying texts (in all cases where you cloze more than one keyword). If you use Cloze on a longer multi-sentence paragraph, you will have to put extra effort in simplifying the resulting items. All cloze deletions should be short enough to ensure you read them entirely at repetition time. Otherwise, your brain will tend to "deduce" the answer from non-semantic cues. This will defeat the purpose of learning! By using one-sentence extracts for cloze deletions, you will save ages on repetition time and eons on time needed to simplify clozes and converting them to the final form based on the minimum information principle. If you plan to cloze only a single keyword along the incremental principles, you can afford less pre-cloze simplification/editing, esp. on the material that still needs more work on its "big picture" structure
• Your work on extracting fragments, producing cloze deletions and editing them should be incremental. In each review, do only as much work on the learning material as is necessary! Extracting and editing in intervals adds additional benefit to learning and is more time-efficient. Each time you rethink structure and formulation, you hone the representation and "connectivity" of a given piece of knowledge in your memory. In addition, your priorities change as you proceed with learning. At times, you will over-invest in a piece of knowledge that quickly becomes irrelevant or out-dated. The incremental approach will reduce the impact of over-investment. Incrementalism should then be used not only while reading, but also in the follow-up processing and formulation of knowledge. See: Examples. Unless you work with top-priority material, do not generate all your cloze deletions in one go. Make it incremental. Generate a cloze today, and another one at the next review. The incremental nature of the learning process, variegated coloring of texts marked with processing styles, and a complex extract hierarchy seem to quarrel with the perfectionist nature of many. However, the purpose of incremental reading is the maximum effect in minimum time. For that reason, at extract time, you are already forming passive trace memory engrams of the extracted sentence. The optimum strategy then is not to proceed with generating cloze deletions, but to move on to other elements in the queue or to other extracts in the same article (if the high priority of the article justifies it)
• Once you finish processing a paragraph with cloze deletions, use Done! () on the learnbar or on the element menu (e.g. with Ctrl+Shift+Enter). This will clean up your learning process without affecting the work you have done. All clozes will remain in the learning process. Done! deletes the extract/paragraph, however, it leaves the original empty element as a holder of the derived cloze deletions. Once you believe your cloze deletions cover all vital keywords of the statement that forms the topic, you execute Done! again. In the end, only cloze items remain in the learning process. Note that the process of descending from the source article to individual clozes may take years. The whole process is incremental and is paced by the declining traces of memory. A single cloze generated from a short sentence often allows of retaining good memory of the entire statement for months. Except for mission-critical pieces of information, you do not execute cloze deletions on all keywords until individual keywords raise questions as to whether they can be recalled individually
• Converting to plain text: Plain text takes much less space. Collections rich in plain text are faster to back up. You can convert short pieces of HTML to plain text as long as they do not contain formatting information that may be needed to effectively remember the text. In the long run, simple plain text items might do their work better by depriving you of additional cues carried by the formatting. Leave some of your items as HTML and convert some to plain text. After some time you will probably have your own preferences as to which do their work better
• After generating a cloze, the last character remains selected. On one hand it indicates which keyword has just been processed, on the other, selections make it possible to use Enter to move to the next element in repetitions
• If you keep getting questions about the template to use at cloze, use Search : Concepts to inspect the concept group to which you imported the article and uncheck Auto-Apply
• You can change the appearance of extracts and cloze deletions with stylesheets. See: Changing the appearance of cloze keywords

Changing the appearance of cloze keywords

This is how you can modify the default cloze style in SuperMemo:

1. From the main menu, select Toolkit : Options
2. In the Options dialog box, click the Fonts tab
3. On the Fonts tab, click the Stylesheet button
4. In the SuperMemo Stylesheet dialog box, select the Clozed option in the drop list at the top; then use Font, Color, and Background buttons to set individual properties of that style

Removing cloze keyword formatting

Display the HTML code behind a given cloze text (e.g. with Ctrl+Shift+F6). In the HTML code, replace class=clozed with an empty string.

	Before	After
HTML	This is my example <SPAN class=clozed>element</SPAN>	This is my example <SPAN>element</SPAN>
WYSIWYG	This is my example element	This is my example element

Your cloze keywords will be formatted in the same way as the surrounding text.

Mimic real life situations to combat memory interference

Some texts present knowledge in the form that is difficult to remember. Lists and sets are a good example of knowledge that does not stick to memory. Even if you perfectly know the map of Africa, answering the request: "List all countries of Africa" may be pretty hard. There are proven techniques that will help you tackle repetitive, list-rich, or boring knowledge with SuperMemo. All solutions are costly at memorization stage, but will pay handsomely in the long run due to lesser forgetting rate. The basic 2 principles are:

1. gradually glue individual pieces to your overall knowledge structure
2. be as visual and mnemonic as possible

Here are some specific hints:

• use a mind map: search the net for a nice mnemonic picture of the subject studied (e.g. political map of Africa). The picture will provide the basic skeleton for your memory. Like ornaments on a Christmas tree, you will hang new pieces of knowledge on this mnemonic skeleton. Use the picture to illustrate all topics and items in the studied concept group.
• do not learn it all at once: Add individual items gradually at a point when they acquire some special meaning. Add them when they fit snugly with the rest of your knowledge. Add them when you specifically need them or when you learn about a related subject. If you need enumerative knowledge for an exam, cram it using traditional methods, and still continue adding individual pieces in unique contexts later on when you feel they are interesting or important.
• associate with stories: if you ask an expert in the field, you will probably hear that (s)he mastered enumerative knowledge by association with individual case stories. Whatever he or she learned at school was quickly forgotten, but individual cases or problems to solve leave a good and durable imprint due to their uniqueness. Once you hit upon a story that is relevant to your hard-to-remember items, try to learn those items in the context of that particular story (e.g. hang the Cameroon up on your knowledge tree only when reading about Eto's move to Chelsea). If you encounter cases in the course of your practise, describe them shortly and use them to supply context.
• supplement with incremental reading: instead of formulating all items along the same repetitive and monotonous template, try to use incremental reading to generate cloze deletions that work on separate storylines. Ideally, you would review your topic and generate just a single subtopic (e.g. on a single country in Africa). Always choose the one that seems most obvious or most important to remember. Always try to add some supplementary material. Be sure you do not provide clues that will make you answer correctly without forming an appropriate association
• compare with experts: ask an expert in the field how (s)he remembers a given fact or association. In some cases you may be dismayed to see how poorly experts recall compulsory college material. At other times, you will see how their memory tackles the problem with ease by using a simple mnemonic. This will help you emulate real life learning at a compressed timescale without ever wasting time on trying to master what others never manage to master anyway. That's the basic difference between school learning and your efficient incremental learning: you do not cram it dry along a rigid prescription. You use your creativity to incrementally build a durable structure of useful knowledge!

Example: dealing with enumerations

If you happen to learn the geological periods, you are bound to generate nasty leeches, esp. if you are new to the subject. Using the top-down learning rule, be sure you know the eras, before you learn the periods, and before you move on to the epochs, and further down the tree of knowledge.

A typical mistake would be to start from cramming the meaningless sequence of periods. For example, clozing the Paleozoic Era sequence: "Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian" could result in a question that is bound to cause problems: "Cambrian, Ordovician, [...], Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian". This cloze will trouble anyone who is not privy to the field. In other words, only those who come with the knowledge ready in their mind will be able to tackle this type of question at little cost! Conclusion: there is no point in learning lists the hard way unless you already know what you are trying to learn! Catch 22!

Instead of using the above approach, it would make far more sense to first anchor the Silurian period in your mind with some meaningful event. For example, the appearance of the bony fish. This way, we might start with a cloze based on "The bony fish appeared in Silurian (443-419 mn years ago)". The following question will be far easier to remember: "The bony fish appeared in [...](period)(443-419 mn years ago)". Even if the answer is the same as in the original unfortunate cloze, that question is not semantically equivalent. You will need more cloze deletions. However, working with similar sequences should always proceed incrementally and in proportion to anchoring individual periods in memory. Later on you can move on to clozing dates, epochs, and other details. All the time you should try to add new interesting anchors and work with the material in parallel to the inflow of meaningful information that is likely to stay long in memory.

Learning

• Use Ctrl+W (Toolkit : Calendar from the main menu) to view the calendar of repetitions. Double-click a day to see which elements will be reviewed on that day. You can also inspect which elements had been reviewed on individual days in the past (switch from Workload to Repetitions mode)
• To inspect the number of today's outstanding elements, peek at the status bar which can be saved at the bottom of the screen in the default layout. You can also look at the Statistics window (e.g. with F5). The Statistics window can also be saved in the default layout (with Ctrl+Shift+F5)
• The optimum time allocation for reading (topics) and learning (items) depends on a number of factors: the subject and the importance of articles, their difficulty, fun factor, your interests, your preferences, your knowledge, your mood, your circadian cycle, etc. The optimum allocation of time can vary from seconds to hours! This is one of the factors where the power of incremental reading comes from. For some texts, you may find it difficult to reach reasonable attention levels for longer than a few minutes. Often you can retain your maximum processing power for just a single sentence or paragraph. On other texts that are highly interesting, well written, highly useful, or highly important, your curiosity and rage to master may kick in and let you go on for several hours without a break. In incremental reading, the primary criterion for time allocation is your level of concentration. You can literally lick a hundred articles in a continuous block of time and still keep your mind highly focused and alert. Some articles will be processed in depth, others will be quickly postponed. The concentration criterion is all-inclusive. It includes all factors listed above: difficulty of an article may affect your concentration, your tiredness will always reduce optimum allocations for difficult texts and increase allocations for interesting or enjoyable texts (those who help you "survive" a bad learning day)
• You can leave some low-priority material in the passive form (i.e. without generating cloze deletions). Naturally, this material will gradually become difficult to recall or entirely forgotten. The best moment for using Remember cloze is when you notice that the material becomes volatile. Do not convert the entire passage into clozes at once (unless it is very important). Pick the most important keyword and create just a single cloze deletion. When the next review of the passage comes along, you will be able to determine which other keywords must be used with cloze deletion to prevent forgetting the key information. It is very difficult to predict how many clozes you will need to generate to attain perfect recall of the whole passage. On occasion, a single cloze suffices. At other times, a single passage can require a dozen of clozes!
• The better you get, the more often you will want to resort to incremental learning. The stronger your incremental learning skills, the shorter the working period that makes employing incremental learning effective. For a proficient user, even a next day's assignment might make sense to be done with incremental learning tools. For a beginner though, it is enough to consider that it may take you a few months of practise to truly understand the flow of knowledge in incremental reading (and in your memory). This alone might make it ineffective in learning for a test that comes in a month or two
• Auto-postpone brings you closer to the ideal spaced repetition learning by reducing the load of low priority material that you cannot possibly master due to excess volume. In a sense, auto-postpone separates high priority material (spaced repetition) and low priority material (traditional learning). Without it, you are stuck in the middle of those two extremes
• You can increase the randomization of your material by adding to Randomization degree in sorting criteria (Learn : Sorting : Sorting criteria from the main menu). Randomization can be set separately for topics and items. It should help you avoid tunnel vision and the priority bias
• You can shorten or increase the interval for individual elements. If you want to schedule a given article for review on a selected day, choose Learning : Reschedule on the element menu (e.g. by pressing Ctrl+J). You can also use Learning : Execute repetition (e.g. by pressing Ctrl+Shift+R). Execute repetition works like Reschedule with this difference that a repetition will be executed before rescheduling. Choose between the two depending on whether you have seen the contents of the item and have attempted to recall it from memory. Execute repetition requires providing a grade (unless you execute it on day when a repetition has already been done).
• For items of lesser importance, reduce priority (Alt+P), increase the interval (Ctrl+Shift+R), or even increase the forgetting index. Forgetting index can be used to optimize the trade-off between the knowledge acquisition rate and knowledge retention. Giving items low priority in an overloaded collection is similar to giving it a higher forgetting index.
• The degree of damage incurred by material overload can be seen in Toolkit : Statistics : Analysis : Use : Priority protection. On one hand you want to increase the value of Priority protection. On the other, limiting the speed of importing new articles in proportion to the progress of learning might make your collection "get stale" resulting in less fun in learning and lesser motivation. Some older articles may be pushed away to lower priorities by overload only to be deleted later as not important enough, not good enough, or outdated
• You should never stop thinking about the value of items that you keep in your memory. See: Re-evaluation of items
• Use Learning : Spread in the browser to change the distribution of your learning material in time. You can speed up learning before an exam by compressing your learning schedule in a selected period. You can also redistribute the material in a longer period after a boring exam (for incremental review, re-learning, deprioritization, and/or elimination). For that latter job, you can choose a specific portion of the material to be served per day. Read about Mercy
• Derivation steps in reasoning/mathematics. If you are learning mathematics, you might wonder if you should commit individual derivation steps of a mathematic proof or solution, or should you just focus on the final outcome. The choice will depend on your goals. If you only need the final formula, time spent on learning the derivation steps could be better spent learning other important portions of the material. If you are not sure today what you will need in the future, you could just type in the whole derivation into a single topic and memorize the final formula. Later, in incremental reading, you will make incremental decisions whether portions of the derivation are or are not important in your work or further learning. This piece of knowledge will compete with others in the learning process and in the long term you may ultimately decide if you want to memorize the details, keep them for passive review only, dismiss/delete some of the steps, or dismiss the entire derivation as redundant (or too costly to learn). Naturally, derivation will often enhance your ability to efficiently use the formula. Hence the decision is never easy. Once you have derivation steps committed, you can always play with their priority to determine the probability you will review them well enough to make a difference to your knowledge.
• You can separate reading (topic) from review (items). However, variety is a spice of life. A random mix of reading and repetitions is a very powerful tool in overcoming the monotony of the earlier versions of SuperMemo. Interspersing topics with items provides for many of the advantages of incremental reading as opposed to traditional learning or classical SuperMemo. To review topics only (reading) choose (1) View : Outstanding, (2) Child : Topics and then (3) Process browser> : Learning : Learn (Ctrl+L). To make repetitions only (items), use an analogous method. It might be a better strategy to mix topics and items during the reading phase, and consolidate knowledge by making item-only repetitions later in the day. In the end, sticking to priorities, auto-sort, and auto-postpone will be the best least-biased long-term strategy
• Fun is the key to success: If your learning text is too "dry", not too meaningful, too wordy, etc. the fun of learning will drop. If learning is not enjoyable, it is less likely to be effective. If you dislike a specific article, perhaps a Wikipedia replacement would be fun and more meaningful? Even if this is a bit longer, you can process it pretty fast with incremental reading, illustrate with pictures, and enjoy the process
• Nurse your hunger for knowledge: You have to find the clear-cut link between knowledge and the value it brings to life. The hunger for knowledge grows as you get more educated (the more you know the more you know you don't know). So there is an excellent remedy for poor motivation: learn more and see how it can impact your and others' life
• You determine the speed of learning in incremental reading! You can determine the frequency of presentation of topics (e.g. using A-Factors, priorities, Mercy, etc.). You can determine the level of retention for items (e.g. with the forgetting index, priorities, auto-postpone, etc.). You can execute forced ahead-of-time review of any material (see: Subset review)
• You MUST NOT memorize material that you do not understand! There is some hope that by doing more learning in other areas you will at some point understand. It is far more likely though that you will build up frustration with items that mean little. If you do not understand a term or concept, you need to dig deep into why. Is it terminology? This can be easily investigated and fixed. Or is it a problem with the material itself? Perhaps you can find an alternative on the net? Perhaps you can find a nice picture on the net to illustrate the item? Obviously, each little investigation takes time, but it is better to master 10-20% of the material well, that to cram an encyclopedia without comprehension. Even if you fail an exam, those 10% can be useful in the future (e.g. if you retake the exam). In general, schools load more than students can master and this leads to lots of stress and frustration. By choosing SuperMemo, you have already made the first good step. Now you need to make order in the process and think carefully about your best long-term strategy. Comprehension is the key to success!
• If you want to grade an item Null or Bad, press 0 or 1 respectively
• SuperMemo is not yet equipped with tools to help you efficiently use your knowledge for good causes. It will boost your knowledge but... you must be vigilant: Do not spend your time on gaining knowledge for the knowledge sake! Think applicability! Luckily, as your knowledge grows, so does your ability to use it efficiently

Re-evaluation of items

You should remember that all items introduced into your learning process require endless attention in reference to their applicability, formulation, importance, logic, etc. In a well-planned learning process, it should not be necessary to review items in the periods between individual repetitions. However, when an item comes up for a repetition, you should make a quick and nearly instinctive assessment of the following:

1. Do I really need this item?
2. What is the honest priority of this item in the entire spectrum of my (desired) knowledge?
3. Is this item difficult to remember? If so, why?
4. Is it factually correct?
5. Is it as simple and clear as it could be?
6. Do I really need to know it now?
7. Do you need supplementary knowledge to understand all ramifications of the item?

Here are some typical actions you will take depending on the answer to the above questions:

1. edit the item. You will use keys such as Q, A, or E to enter a desired text field and edit it. In more complex items you will use Ctrl+T to circle between components, Alt+click to switch a component between editing and dragging modes, or Ctrl+E to enter the editing mode
2. de-prioritize the item. For items that are not important enough, or you are not sure are important enough, use Alt+P and reduce their priority. You can also use Ctrl+Shift+Down arrow for minor deprioritizations
3. reschedule the item. If you know the item well or for some reason want to manually increase (or decrease) the length of the inter-repetition interval, press Ctrl+Shift+R to select the date of the next repetition
4. dismiss the item. If you are sure you are not likely to need the item in the future, but you would like to keep it in your collection for reference or archival purposes, press Ctrl+D. Dismissed items are removed from the learning process
5. delete the item. The key Del is very useful in cleaning your collection from garbage that results from your desire to know more than your memory can hold. In the editing mode or in spelling items (i.e. at times when Del plays text editing functions), you may need to use Ctrl+Shift+Del instead. Please note that deleting an element in SuperMemo will delete all its children! You may therefore wish to learn to always use safer Done (Ctrl+Shift+Enter) instead
6. delay or forget the item. If you think the item is too difficult at the moment, you can postpone learning it. For this purpose, choose Ctrl+J to set a new interval or use Forget to transfer the item to the pending queue. This will give you some time to import some supplementary material that will help you understand the item

Formulation

• Use minimum information principle which says that simple elements formulated for active recall bring much better learning results than complex elements. This holds true even though one complex element may be equivalent to a large number of simpler elements. See: Minimum information principle.
• Some information may be presented as a list. Lists should be avoided. However, some are inevitable (e.g. list of nerves, list of tributaries, list of EU admissions, etc.). If you need to memorize lists, use mnemonic techniques and try to mimic real life situations to combat memory interference. See also: Learning lists
• The way you ask the question in SuperMemo may differ from the way your life asks you the same question. In other words, you may store some material in SuperMemo, but a real-life situation will trick you into being unable to recall it. In other words, you need to properly formulate the material to maximize its recall in all potential contexts
• Remember about the universality of memorized rules. For example, it is better to learn a universal mathematical formula than just the examples of its use. Examples can be used to emphasize applicability in various contexts
• You can use Parse HTML (Ctrl+Shift+1) to convert selected HTML code into formatting (e.g. try inserting <hr> or <br> and parsing it with Parse HTML). You can also use this option to remove formatting (e.g. if you want to get rid of line breaks)
• You can edit your more elaborate texts using your favorite HTML editor. You need to associate that editor with the filename extension *.HTM. For example, if you associate Microsoft Expression Web (free) with *.HTM, you can edit your texts by just pressing Ctrl+F9. If you would rather leave your associations unchanged, you can use F9 to view the file in Internet Explorer, and choose File : Edit with Microsoft Expression Web (that menu item is added to Internet Explorer by Expression Web). For more see: Open HTML files in the default HTML editor
• Background color styles are used in incremental reading to preserve the original font used in documents. However, for this to work you must uncheck the following option in your Internet Explorer: Tools : Internet options : General : Accessibility : Formatting : Ignore colors specified on webpages

To learn more about efficient formulation read: Effective learning: 20 rules of formulating knowledge

Pictures

• Important pictures should be kept in image components (not inside HTML texts). Use Ctrl+V or Shift+Ins to paste a picture from the clipboard. You can paste the picture to a new element or to an image component. Do not paste pictures to HTML. Having pictures pasted into an image component makes it easy to resize, tile, fit, or move the image, as well as to change its attributes such as stretch, transparency, display time (e.g. at answer time only), etc. Pictures pasted or imported to image components are stored in the image registry and can be searched for by their name. They can be reused in many elements. They are automatically used to illustrate all extracts and clozes generated from the article that holds the picture. They cannot be easily lost when editing texts, etc. HTML components can keep remote pictures stored on the web but, naturally, you will lose them once the picture is removed from the remote server
• Use Download with Insert or Localize in Download images on the component menu (Ctrl+F8) to transfer remote pictures to your hard disk
• Use Rename (member) (Alt+R) to give pictures meaningful names for an easy search in the image registry
• To search for a picture, use Search : Find elements (Ctrl+F). Alternatively, you can locate it via the image registry with:
  1. Search : Images (to open the image registry), and
  2. Ctrl+S to search the registry (same as Search : Find texts on the registry menu)
• If you want a picture to be part of the answer (i.e. not visible at question time), mark it with Answer on the image component menu

To learn more about using pictures, see: Visual learning

References

See: Hints for using references

Your own discoveries

In incremental learning, you will quickly discover why some of your own ideas about the learning process might not be optimum. Here are some things that you will discover on your own within the first 2-3 months of intense incremental learning:

• recognition is good for your exam, but recall is vital for your professional skills in the long-term
• manually organizing the timing of review is not what suits your memory best; it is actually quite the opposite to the idea of SuperMemo, which says that you review the material at moments that help stabilize memories
• manually organizing the order of review is not what suits your memory best (even though subset review is a very useful tool in SuperMemo when preparing for an exam)
• for beginners, traditional learning might be superior to SuperMemo in a very short-term (perhaps up to 1-2 months) because of the steep learning curve. You need to learn the toolset of incremental reading before you can reap the benefits (unless you employ simple Q&A learning when SuperMemo might be superior even within a week's perspective)
• you may reach 95% recall within 1-2 weeks on condition that you do not postpone your review. However, if you dump 1,000 pages of topics into the process at once, you will simply not manage to review all that material as scheduled by SuperMemo, and your retention might hover around 60-80% depending on how much time you invested in making repetitions
• once SuperMemo learns a bit about your memory and habits (1-3 weeks), you will oscillate around 95% recall as of the first repetition (if you do not delay, and if you stick to the rules of formulating knowledge)
• you will quickly discover that multiple cloze deletions on a single paragraph are not a good idea (e.g. compare the measured forgetting index with items that have the same cloze keywords separated, or just see how thus gained knowledge works in practice)
• you can look at learning parameters in SuperMemo to see how different approaches to learning affect your progress

Advantages of incremental reading

In incremental learning, you learn fast, you acquire massive loads of knowledge, retain memories for life, remember almost all that you have learned, understand things better, develop harmoniously in all directions, enhance your creativity, and all that while having incredible fun! If that sounds too good to be true, please read more below or just give it a solid try.

Massive learning

Incremental learning offers a possibility of studying a huge number of subjects in parallel. In traditional reading, very often, one book or academic subject must be completed before studying another. With incremental learning, there is virtually no limit on how many subjects you can study at the same time. The volume of processed knowledge can be staggering. Only the availability of time and your memory capacity will keep massive learning in check.

Lifetime memories

As incremental learning is based on spaced repetition, all memories that you form while learning will be indefinitely protected from forgetting. See: General principles of SuperMemo. Only SuperMemo makes it possible to implement incremental reading. Incremental reading requires continual retention of knowledge. Depending on the volume of knowledge flow in the program, the interval between reading individual portions of the same article may extend from days to months and even years. SuperMemo (repetition spacing) provides the foundation of incremental reading, which is based on stable memory traces that would not fade between the bursts of reading

High retention

In incremental learning, the review of the learning material is governed by a spaced repetition algorithm known as the SuperMemo method. The algorithm ensures 95% knowledge retention by default. That fraction can be increased at the cost of higher cost in time (i.e. more frequent review). Retention can also be reduced to increase the overall speed of learning. In heavily overloaded collections, 95% retention figure refers only to top-priority material. To save time, low priority material may be reviewed less frequently, resulting in lesser retention.

Comprehension

One of the limiting factors in acquiring new knowledge is the barrier of understanding. Building knowledge in your brain is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle. Some pieces cannot be placed in the puzzle before the others. Some pieces capitalize on others. There is no point in memorizing facts about Higgs boson before you learn what the standard model is and that, in turn, should follow the general understanding of particle physics which itself requires some ABC of physics. In incremental reading, if you encounter texts related to Higgs boson you can manually delay it until the time you hope your Physics ABC will provide the ground for understanding the boson. In traditional reading, you would just waste your time on reviewing Higgs boson material just because you would not have tools to effectively reschedule and reprioritize your reading in the middle of a longer article. Traditionally, your decision to skip the material would provide no definite way of coming back to the skipped material in the future. With incremental reading, you waste no time on reading material you do not understand. You can safely skip portions of material and return to them in the future. You become the master of the conscious knowledge building process. You can gradually build understanding of complex phenomena.

All written materials, depending on the reader's knowledge, pose a degree of difficulty in accurately interpreting their meaning. This is particularly visible in highly specialist scientific papers that use a sophisticated symbol-rich language. A symbol-rich language is a language that gains conciseness by the use of highly specialist vocabulary and notational conventions. For an average reader, symbol-rich language may exponentially raise the bar of lexical competence (i.e. knowledge of vocabulary required to gain understanding). Incremental reading makes it possible to delay the processing of those articles, paragraphs or sentences that require prior knowledge of concepts that are not known at the moment of reading. The processing of the learning material will only take place then when the new information begins to slot in comfortably in the fabric of the reader's knowledge. You can then gradually proceed through this material and gradually build the understanding from basic or simple facts towards details or more complex components of knowledge. You will build understanding, resolve contradictions and ultimately creatively discover new truths about the learned material. Over time, you will optimize the structure of knowledge in your mind in terms of coherence, integrity, and representation. Incremental reading will make it possible to tackle the hardest material that might otherwise seem unreadable.

Uniform progress

Instead of focusing on a single subject of study, the student will review dozens of subject areas in a single day. Instead of monopolizing his or her knowledge with a single area of expertise, he or she will harmoniously deepen all facets of his knowledge in proportion to needs and/or interests. The growth of the knowledge tree will also be guided by the present level of understanding of individual subjects, in proportion to the growth of the supporting knowledge and specialist terminology. Instead of growing a few thick branches, the knowledge tree will grow twigs in all possible directions while still adding bulk to the trunk and main boughs. Incremental learning is inherently incapable of producing medical experts who have never heard of the Kuiper Belt, or astronomers who have no idea what constitutes a basic healthy diet. SuperMemo helps you prioritize the acquisition of knowledge in various fields. It also helps you fine-tune the balance between specialization and general knowledge. See also how SuperMemo prevents tunnel vision

Creativity boost

The key to creativity is an association of remote ideas. By studying multiple subjects in unpredictable order, you will increase your power to associate ideas. This will immensely improve your creativity. Incremental reading may be compared to brainstorming with yourself. SuperMemo will throw at you various articles, paragraphs, statements and questions in a most unexpected order. In the long run, the greatest creative advantage comes from knowledge permanently stored in your memory (as opposed to knowledge that requires Google). It is only a matter of creative effort and invested time before different pieces of knowledge can be associated to form new quality. This will also provide your brain with an entertaining form of mental training that will be highly appreciated in all forms of professions based on intellectual performance.

With incremental mail processing, it is also possible to mesh your learning, creative writing, and creative problem solving with a creative mail exchange with other people. This may appear helpful in collective problem solving or in complex projects when you need to strike a balance between focused individual work and pulling the team brains together. This process is called incremental brainstorming. Incremental brainstorming is slower, but it does not need synchronization (circadian rhythm, time zones, motivation, etc.), and you do not need to interrupt each other's work. Incremental brainstorming will never replace face-to-face interactive collaboration, however, it has many advantages associated with incremental learning (creativity, prioritization, attention, meticulousness, long-term viability, etc.). It may provide an excellent knowledge-based supplement, or be your best creative collaboration tool when working at a distance (esp. via different time zones). The creative process is unpredictable, and when you hit your best ideas when the rest of the team is asleep, it makes a good sense to strike the iron while hot: employ creative elaboration and send your idea out.

For more on the employment of incremental learning in the creative process see:

• incremental problem solving
• incremental writing
• incremental brainstorming
• neural creativity

Consistency (resolving chaos and contradiction)

Contradiction and chaos in your learning material comes from bad sources, from errors, from disagreements in science, or from the fact that you start the process from importing a set of unrelated or even chaotic articles describing a studied complex problem.

If your learning material contains contradictory information, your brain will quickly alert you to this fact. In classical learning, you would often relearn new facts that would contradict earlier learned facts. Then you would relearn the older version again and this wasteful cycle might repeat more than once. In SuperMemo, the same process can take place; however, there will be two mechanisms that will turn chaos and contradiction into a self-limiting condition. The first mechanism relies on high retention of knowledge in SuperMemo that will often make you instantaneously spot the contradiction: Wait a minute! I have already learned this fact and the answer was different! Unfortunately, even SuperMemo isn't hermetic to contradiction (your retention actually never reaches 100%). The second mechanism is the convergence of contradictory material in time. If you, for example, learn two different answers to What is the size of human population?, say, 5.5 billion and 6 billion, you will naturally provide a wrong answer to one of these questions. Once you relearn it the new way, you will provide a wrong answer to the other question. Inter-repetition intervals for these two contradictory items will get shorter with each relearning cycle. The repetitions of contradictory items converge in time. Sooner or later, the red alert will be raised by your brain. You will quickly resolve the difference and delete one of the items. Similar process will affect hazy or incompletely specified information. Your knowledge will grow in consistency with time.

In scientific research, acquiring engineering knowledge, studying a narrow topic of interest, etc. we are constantly faced with a chaos of disparate and often contradictory statements. By introducing the chaos of new research into SuperMemo, you will gradually locate contradictions and strive at building better and more consistent models in your memory. Incremental reading stochastically juxtaposes pieces of information coming from various sources and uses the associative qualities of human memory to emphasize and then resolve contradiction. You will quickly lean towards theories that are better supported by research findings. Those supported poorly will be less firm and will often cause recall problems. Naturally, it may happen that you wish to learn contradictory statements too. For example, the opinions of dissenting scientists. In those cases, SuperMemo will help you emphasize the need of rich context. You will label individual statements with their proponent names or with the school of thought labels.

Stresslessness

Observers and new users of SuperMemo believe that complexity of incremental reading must make it stressful. Some report that even reading about incremental learning is stressful. However, even though complexity always leads to a degree of stress or confusion, in the long-term, the opposite is true: SuperMemo helps you combat stress. Stressless learning is one of the greatest advantages of incremental learning. All the advantages listed in this section contribute to the sense of fun and relaxation. However, SuperMemo's ability to combat information overload might be the chief factor. Conversely, low stress levels have a miraculous impact on the effectiveness of learning.

Not everyone is stressed with information overload. There is a precondition for experiencing stress of having too much to read or too much to learn: obsessive hunger for knowledge, fear of not being able to keep up, pressing need for new knowledge, etc. This precondition is met in a great proportion of the general population according to a number of studies, and is actually less likely in younger individuals, including students, who are shielded from stress by their less crystallized motivation for learning.

The term Information Fatigue Syndrome has been coined recently to refer to stress coming from problems with managing overwhelming information. Some consequences of IFS listed by Dr. David Lewis, a British psychologist, include: anxiety, tension, procrastination, time-wasting, loss of job satisfaction, self-doubt, psychosomatic stress, breakdown of relationships, reduced analytical capacity, etc. The information era tends to overwhelm us with the amount of information we feel compelled to process. Incremental reading does not require all-or-nothing choices on articles to read. All-or-nothing choices are stressful! Can I afford to skip this article? For months I haven't had time to read this article! etc. SuperMemo helps you prioritize and skip articles partially (by decision) or automatically (i.e. behind the scenes). Oftentimes, reading 3% of an article may provide 50% of its reading value. Reading of articles may be delayed without your participation, i.e. not by stressful procrastination, but by a sheer competition with other pieces of information on the basis of their priority. In incremental reading, instead of hesitating or procrastinating, you simply prioritize.

If you happen to open a dozen of tabs in your web browser, you will often be stressed about the optimum course of action. You might be late for sleep, or late for work, and yet you do not want to lose the information. In SuperMemo, you just import&prioritize. Or just import. Nothing is lost. You will encounter the imported material as soon as your learning time allocations permit. Similarly, you can clear your 1,000 pieces mail Inbox in a few hours with all pieces of mail well prioritized and scheduled for review.

Once you know you can rely on SuperMemo in presenting review material for you, you can eliminate the stress and anxiety related to having too much to study or too much to read. You will never manage to read or learn all that you would hope for, but you will at least not lose sleep over planning and scheduling. SuperMemo is a promise of the best use of your potential. With this conviction, you can devote all your energy to comprehension, analysis and retention of the learned material.

SuperMemo helps you take away a big deal of information overload stress. In a typical IFS stress therapy, you will see that scrupulous notes, ordering one's desk, planning one's work, keeping a calendar of appointments, etc. all have a strong therapeutic value. SuperMemo does exactly the same: it helps you keep a scrupulous and well-prioritized record of what you want to read and takes away stressful chaos from the process of acquiring information and learning the collected material. SuperMemo eliminates disorder and the ensuing uncertainty that often characterizes wild searches for information on the net.

Attention

Human brain has an in-built limit on the attention span. We all get bored with things. This is particularly visible in kids. Limited attention helps maximize the learning input. This is why most toys have a short lifespan, and other kids' toys seem always more interesting. The same is true of reading. Even the best articles can become taxing if they get too long. Millions of people do a daily channel zapping on TV. This absurd activity is driven precisely by the craving for dense action and information variety. A gripping movie goes "too slow" for a typical channel zapper. This is why he or she prefers to watch three movies at the same time (even though the coherence of the plot of each will suffer). Incremental learning is a perfect remedy to the limited attention span. Even a single unlucky paragraph in an article may greatly reduce your enthusiasm for reading. If you stumble against a few frustrating paragraphs, you may gradually develop a dislike of reading a particular article. You may even become fed up with reading for the entire evening.

In incremental reading, once you sense any sign of boredom or distraction, you can jump to the next article with mostly positive side effects (expressed mainly in better memories produced by spaced learning). Unlike in channel zapping, you won't miss any information. Just the opposite, you will maximize attention per paragraph. Your attention to the same piece of information may depend on your mood, amount of prior reading, today's interest that may depend on the piece of news you heard on the morning radio, etc. With incremental reading, you can fit your best attention to each individual piece of reading. You can change the approach depending on your circadian status (i.e. the time of the day, mental energy, etc.). You can deprioritize articles that undermine attention. You can split intimidating articles into more manageable portions. The boost in attention is one of the main reasons why incremental reading is more fun than ordinary reading.

Consolidation

Everything we learn must be reviewed from time to time in order to be remembered. If you read an article in intervals, you already begin the consolidation of memory which may save you lots of time. In traditional reading, you would need to read the whole article, and then to review the article later several times. With earlier releases of SuperMemo, you would need to read the whole article, and then only review the most important parts of the article in SuperMemo at intervals determined by the program. Now you can begin the consolidation-review cycle already during reading! Incremental reading combines the process of extracting pieces of valuable knowledge with memory consolidation. This pre-consolidation will often dramatically reduce the number of repetitions required before your material gets to be reviewed in long intervals of months and years. By the time you convert parts of the material into clozes or question-answer items, you will already have it well-consolidated. This consolidation will be based on solid context, a degree of redundancy (that helps retention), and an easy-to-remember formulation based on cloze deletion. Extracting pieces of information from a larger body of knowledge provides your items with all the relevant context. This slow process of jelling out knowledge produces an enhanced sense of meaning and applicability of individual pieces of information. Semantically equivalent pieces of information may be consolidated in varying contexts adding additional angles to their associative power. In other words, not only will you remember better. You will also be able to view the same information from different perspectives.

Prioritization

You always have a long queue of articles to read, and there are always more articles to read than you can ever hope to remember. In incremental reading, you can precisely determine the priority of each article, paragraph, sentence or question. Evaluating articles and prioritizing them is difficult because you cannot do a good evaluation without actually reading a part of the article in question. In incremental reading, you can read the introduction and then decide when to read the rest. If an article is extremely valuable or interesting, you can process it entirely at once. Other articles can slowly scramble through the learning process. Yet others may ultimately be deleted. The prioritization will continue while you are reading the article. If the evaluation of quality or content changes while reading, so will the reading-review schedule.

Prioritization tools will ensure that important pieces of information will receive better processing. This will maximize the value of your reading time. This will also reduce the impact of material overflow on retention. You will always remember the desired proportion of your top-priority material. While the lesser priority material may suffer more from the overflow and be remembered less accurately. Priority of articles is not set in stone. You can modify it manually while reading in proportion to the value you extract from a given article. The priority will also change automatically each time you generate article extracts. It will change if you delay or advance scheduled reading. The priority of extracts is determined by the priority of articles. The priority of questions and answers produced from individual sentences is determined by their parenting extracts. Multiple prioritization tools will help you effectively deal with massive changes in your learning focus. With the prioritization tools you can always determine your learning focus in numbers!

This is one of the most important things about incremental reading: efficient fishing for pieces of golden knowledge!

Speed (of reading)

Incremental readers can beat speed readers in the speed of reading! This is true even for relative beginners with little or no speed-reading training. The caveat: all that is possible at the cost of delayed comprehension. In speed-reading, you always need to worry about the comprehension level. High comprehension is where speed-reading skills are vital. However, in incremental reading, you can quickly skim through less important portions of the text without worrying you will miss a detail. The skimmed fragment will be scheduled for later review. You can optionally determine when the review will happen and at what priority (low priority review may be delayed further, often automatically). You can quickly jump from paragraph to paragraph, get the overall picture, mark fragments for later reading, mark fragments for detailed study, etc. This speed-reading method, with a bit of training, is stress free. You will eliminate the greatest bottleneck of speed-reading: fear of missing important pieces of information. When you come back to the skimmed fragments in the future, they may have already become irrelevant or less important. That is one of a savings in time generated by incremental reading. You always focus on top priority material and you spend little time worrying about things that are left for later reading. Incremental reading is speed-reading without the loss of comprehension. Once you speed-read the entire article, you can slowly digest it again from the very beginning in the incremental reading process. Needless to say, speed-reading does not come close to incremental reading when it comes to long-term retention. Memories are always subject to forgetting. All valuable information that you collect while reading may be forgotten at any time. Pieces that would be retained without SuperMemo (e.g. through regular use) produce minimum workload. Other pieces will allow you to never need to come back to the article in question. In conclusion, all knowledge that you need in the long-run, should be best acquired via incremental reading. Traditional reading can still be used for entertainment, temporary knowledge (e.g. how to install a sound board), curiosity (e.g. news), etc. This is not to say that speed-reading skills are not useful in incremental reading. If you are already a solid speed-reader, you can add to your speed and comprehension with the help of incremental reading. In the process, you will hone your skills further and become even a faster reader.

See also: Speed-reading on steroids, which also explains the bell-shaped curve of changes in the cost of topic review.

Speed (of formulating items)

Cloze deletion is the fastest tool for converting texts into items. In addition to massive imports, you can introduce your own rough notes into SuperMemo and later gradually convert them into well-structured knowledge. Less important material may remain unstructured and, as such, less well-remembered. You will see how passive notes gradually fade in your memory and how their individual components will need to be reinforced by formulating specific well-structured items. You will make such reinforcement decisions on the one-by-one basis depending on the importance of the fading material and the degree of recall problems. Naturally, due to a typical learning overflow, you will always neglect some portions of the material. This is how you will gain additional speed understood as the time invested per item. You will generate items faster, re-formulate them with greater ease, and save additional time by neglecting less important material. This is prioritization via formulation. Less important material will remain in a less processed and messier state characterized by lower retention.

Meticulousness

With well-prioritized stream of information, you are served knowledge in smaller chunks. This makes it possible to truly focus on most important pieces and discover things that would never get noticed in the mass of voluminous learning. Good attention brings meticulousness and creative discovery. In other words, this is a marriage of prioritization, attention, and creativity advantages with a new twist: noticing things that are hard to notice in massive learning.

Training

With massive incremental reading, you will hone a set of skills that are vital for efficient learning. By repeating the same procedures over and over again, day in and day out, over the months and years, you will become a master of processing and retaining knowledge! If you want things well done, do them often. Here are some examples of skills that will get a boost and change your learning:

• Recognizing suitable texts at a glance of an eye. Some texts are great for efficient reading, some are full of chaff and waffle. The more articles you need to preview fast and prioritize, the faster you can do it and more accurate you become. This is an exercise in expert pattern recognition.
• Formulating knowledge efficiently. In terms of learning efficiency, the difference between well-formulated and ill-formulated items may be as high as 1:10 or even 1:100. Some items are mnemonic. Others are confusing. Some require 5-6 repetitions in a lifetime. Others permanently reside among leeches that come back for review and waste your precious time.
• Mnemonic skills. The more you try to remember, the better you know how to remember things fast and for long. Mnemonic skills can be developed in dedicated courses. They can also improve with each single item you formulate and memorize.
• Speed-reading skills. Fast reading is a hallmark of incremental learning. Traditional speed-reading is very different from speed-reading with SuperMemo. You nearly never need to worry about missing information. Incremental reading carries none of the burdens of a typical hit-and-miss speed-reading. There is no limit on the speed of skimming. Mastery of keyboard is as important as the eye saccades. The more you skim, the better you skim. The more you hurry, the more you skim. Incremental learning accelerates your hunger for knowledge, and the speed at which you devour it.
• Semantic skills. The language is a jigsaw puzzle of words and phrases played on a set board of grammar. Understanding the language is vital for speed-reading where the structure of a sentence needs to be parsed in a fraction of a millisecond at a single glance. In incremental reading, correct formulation of clozes will often require minor rewording. Like in a puzzle, you will need to shift a word from here to there, remove sections of sentences, insert context, change the tense, remove referential ambiguity, etc. Mastery of the grammatical sentence skeleton and the semantics will increase with every and each new cloze polished for long-term memory.
• Prioritizations skills. New students, however smart, are often totally blind to the priority of knowledge. They are unable to judge the extent of their present and future knowledge. They find it difficult to differentiate gold from garbage. Seemingly precious knowledge becomes garbage if it does not pass the priority test that ensures it can ever be mastered. The lifetime capacity of the human brain is limited. Without understanding the limits, newcomers to incremental learning will often embark onto a futile quest for mastering details that would steal room needed for memories that are essential to one's existence (professional and beyond). With every passing month and with the constant increase in the size of your knowledge and your collection (i.e. also "knowledge to-be"), you will better understand your ultimate limits. Your knowledge selection skills will keep improving for years to come.
• Editing and SuperMemo skills. SuperMemo is complex. It takes months to fully explore. SuperMemo is also keyboard-oriented. The list of keyboard shortcuts is overwhelming. Only with the mastery of the keyboard and SuperMemo itself can you become a true pro of incremental learning who can whiz through dozens of articles per hour. You will edit dozens of little pieces of texts to optimally formulate your questions. Speed-reading and semantic skills, combined with editing skills will help you instantly mold the texts in your collection to suit your long-term goals.

Knowledge database

Once your collection grows rich in materials from various domains, you can use it before you use Google to search for information about a subject within the material that you already want to learn. The search results will not be as rich, but they will be far more focused on the areas of your interest. While doing search&review, you will be able to reduce the future workload in many areas. This is fun!

All-in-one archive

Once you become proficient with SuperMemo you can use it as an all-encompasing archive of all your media files. Those files do not need to be part of the learning process, however, you can combine archiving functions with the incremental process (e.g. when annotating your family photo album collection). SuperMemo may be a great way to get rid of those dusty paper documents, tape recorder cassettes, CDs, photo albums, school notebooks, etc. You can archive this in dedicated folders on your computer and import it all to SuperMemo. Incremental processing of archive has many advantages. For example, while annotating family pictures from two centuries ago, you can fill in the gaps in information by simple face recognition that may rely on a degree of learning or creative juxtaposition of photographs from different sources in close intervals. Incremental audio can also convert your jukebox SuperMemo into a stream of music with a maximized fun factor. There are millions of ways of sorting tracks on your media player device, by filename, by date, by annotation, by priority, by recent viewing... all that does not compare to the incremental review process. This is because the quality of your experience when processing music or photos is based on the same forgetting mechanisms that affect learning. You want to see or listen to some things more often than others, but not too often. Forgetting is the key to experiencing music or imagery or videos again and again with a heightened degree of fun, pleasure and, last but not least, learning.

Fun

The sense of productivity might be one of the most satisfying emotions. This is why incremental learning should be highly enjoyable. This only magnifies its powers. To experience the elation of incremental learning, you may need a few months of focused practice. You will first have to start with the basic tools and techniques. Then you will need to master knowledge representation skills. Finally, you will need a couple of months of heavy-load incremental learning to perfect the details and develop your own "incremental learning philosophy". You will also need to grow your collection as size matters for the fun of learning. Last but not least, incremental learning requires good language skills, some touch-typing skills, and patience (SuperMemo will often want you to go against your own intuition). Although the material is originally imported from electronic sources, it always needs to be molded, shortened, provided with context clues, restructured for wording and grammar, etc. The skills involved are not trivial and require practice.

If you have used SuperMemo and/or spaced repetition, you may have concluded that learning with SuperMemo is boring due to its repetitive nature. Those who can compare the classic SuperMemo with incremental learning will testify that incremental learning is by far more fun. In contrast to classic SuperMemo, where you focus on the review of the old material, incremental reading interweaves the old with the new. Novelty adds to the fun and efficiency of learning. Incremental learning is by far more challenging and colorful than typical repetitions. In addition to review and reading, you can import rich graphics, audio and video to spice up your learning process.

In the end, you risk becoming seriously addicted to incremental learning. The statement "I do not read books" should no longer be considered in a negative light! As long as you keep incremental learning in rational check, it will benefit you and others around you.

Disadvantages

Most of disadvantages of incremental learning come from factors that are a disadvantage in nearly all human pursuits: opportunity and overhead costs. However, there are also disadvantages that come from the fact that Incremental learning is not for everyone. Poor selection of knowledge may result in wasting time on low-quality learning. Moreover, incremental learning may lead to frustration, stress, addiction, compulsive use, and other undesirable effects on user's psychology.

Here is the short list of disadvantages to consider:

• opportunity costs: each time you learn with SuperMemo, you are not doing something else. You might be neglecting your creative pursuits, other people, your children, your own health, etc. Incremental learning makes sense only if it is done in the right proportion to your other activities. That proportion will depend on your skills, goals, profession, lifestyle, personality, and more. You need to strike the optimum balance on your own. It might be just a few minutes to polish your English or professional knowledge. Or it might be a few hours if you are a medical student. You always need to keep opportunity costs in mind and keep a score of costs and benefits.
• overhead costs: there is no way around a steep learning curve in incremental learning. You will be thwarted by limitations of software, and the overall complexity of the concept. You will wonder why some solutions in SuperMemo have been set upside down against your best intuition. You will keep improving your skills, and strategies over long months and years. Even mastering the basic techniques will take a lot of time. You should be aware of that difficulty before you embark on the process that is bound to cause some stress and frustration at the beginning. At the same time, you should find hope in the fact that for a pro, the overhead costs are negligible. All extra operations are semi-automatic while the learning process proceeds largely uninterrupted in student's mind. While keystrokes are issued, knowledge is actively being processed by the memory system. All operations have been optimized for pro use. Once you get to a pro level and follow the recommended strategy, overhead cost disadvantage will cease to matter.
• learning garbage (GIGO): if your selection of learning material is poor, or your formulation skills inadequate, you risk wasting lots of time on learning things that you do not need or that do not bring a tangible memory effect. This is why you must read 20 rules of formulating knowledge, keep knowledge selection at the front of your mind, and be honest with your priority queue.
• frustration and stress: incremental learning is not for everyone. It requires a certain level of proficiency with the language that may be hard for some to reach. It requires a mind that is somewhat abstract-enabled. Did you do well in math? Or science? These are good omens. If incremental learning is not fun after a few months of determined study, you need to re-read this entire article with utmost attention. Otherwise, your incremental adventure will not bring fruit.

Incremental learning must be fun to work!

Incremental reading: Summary

• If you are serious about learning, you must learn incremental reading! Without it, you might be missing the best part of SuperMemo!
• Incremental reading makes it possible to read thousands of articles in parallel without getting lost.
• Use Extract (Alt+X) and Cloze (Alt+Z) to extract the most valuable pieces of knowledge while reading. Use the keyboard for maximum speed. However, if you are new to SuperMemo, you can also use the learnbar for the job.
• Standard repetitions and incremental reading should be intermingled. This serves variety and creativity. Auto-sort repetitions will sort your repetitions, introduce a tiny degree of randomness, and ensure a steady, moderate, and prioritized inflow of new articles into the learning process. Read more about the priority queue
• You can control the timing and priority of review in incremental reading by modifying intervals (Shift+Ctrl+R or Ctrl+J), priority (Alt+P), and the forgetting index (e.g. Shift+Ctrl+P).
• Use read-points (Ctrl+F7), good titles (Alt+T), reference labels (Alt+Q), and manually inserted context clues to minimize context recovery overhead (i.e. the cost of recalling the correct context of individual questions).
• Auto-postpone will automatically delay the review of the excess of low-priority material. Use Postpone to manually handle the overload or define the postpone criteria.
• Do not forget to review 20 rules of formulating knowledge to make sure you do not waste hours on badly formulated material.

References

Why need references?

In incremental reading, you always need to quickly recover the context of a question or a piece of text. The easiest way to recover context quickly is via references. References propagate from element to element as you produce extracts and cloze deletions. With all child elements produced from a given text marked with references, you would never need to worry about losing the context of the question.

For example:

Q: He was born in [...](year)

cannot be answered without the context. However, the following question is already easier to understand:

Q: He was born in [...](year)

---

#Title: Barrack Obama
#Source: Wikipedia

To speed up learning, in the incremental reading process, the above question should naturally be replaced with:

Q: Obama was born in [...](year)

or

Q: Obama was born in [...](year)

---

#Title: Barrack Obama
#Source: Wikipedia

References are not stored in HTML files that hold your articles but in a reference registry (i.e. in a separate database). The reference registry does not hold the text of references either. All reference texts are held in the text registry and are available for global text searches. In earlier versions of SuperMemo, each text would keep its own copy of references. In newer SuperMemos, elements keep only pointers to reference registry, which in turn keeps pointers to individual text fields in the text registry. As a result, many elements can hold the same reference, and many references can hold the same text. This results in a significant saving in space in your collection. More importantly, you can update the reference in a single element and see the change show in all elements using the same reference. This way, you do not need to waste time on search&replace to correct a single misspelling or reference inaccuracy that propagated to many elements.

Example

If you select the title of the source article and press Alt+T (Reference : Title on the HTML component menu), each extract will be marked by the title of the source article. If you use Edit : Web import : All, your articles will be provided with basic references (such as #Title, #Link, #Date, etc.). If you need more context (e.g. to add the author, the journal, etc.), you can use the reference link button () on the navigation bar to jump to the source article from which the extract was produced. On the parent article, that button will lead you to the original link on the net.

Figure: Typical snapshot of incremental reading. While learning about the greenhouse effect, the student extracts the fragment saying that "An ideal thermally conductive blackbody at the same distance from the Sun as Earth would have a temperature of about 5.3 °C. However, because Earth reflects about 30% of the incoming sunlight, this idealized planet's effective temperature (the temperature of a blackbody that would emit the same amount of radiation) would be about −18 °C. The surface temperature of this hypothetical planet is 33 °C below Earth's actual surface temperature of approximately 14 °C.. The mechanism that produces this difference between the actual surface temperature and the effective temperature is due to the atmosphere and is known as greenhouse effect". The extracted fragment will inherit illustrations placed on the right, as well as article references. The student can move on to reading another article by pressing Enter. The picture on the right is stored locally in the image registry (on the user's hard disk) and can be reused to illustrate other articles or questions.

Reference system highlights

• To mark texts as reference fields use the Reference submenu on the HTML component menu (e.g. Reference : Select or Alt+Q)
• Reference fields #Article, #Parent and #Concept group are added automatically and are not stored in the reference registry. These fields are not generated in elements that have no other reference fields defined
• References marked with Alt+Q options show up in the reference field and can be deleted from the text's body (if no longer needed)
• Hover your mouse over the Reference link button () on the navigation bar to quickly see the reference in longer extracts.
• From the user's point of view, there is a little difference in the way the references are handled as compared with earlier SuperMemos. SuperMemo 2008 or later differentiates between the following 2 types of references edits:
  • local edits that affect only the present element and create a new reference record vs.
  • global edits which change the original reference in all the elements that use it.

When SuperMemo is not sure if your edits are local or global, it will ask you

• Note that all extracts generate elements that are children of the original article. If you have problems with recalling the original context of a fragment, you can always call it back by pressing the Parent button on the navigation bar. You can also use the Reference link button () to get to the source article, or, if you have already reached it, to get to the original article on the web.
• If you choose an empty selection for the #Date reference, you will mark the text with the current date and time stamp
• AND-Search in SuperMemo works on texts, not on elements. This means that reference texts do not take part in AND-Search for the main body of text. This may result in false misses. In SuperMemo, texts and individual reference fields are all treated as separate texts and are all searched independently
• Formatting of references can be changed via stylesheets
• Converting HTML to plain text does not affect the formatting of references (i.e. plain text entries can have their references formatted by a stylesheet)
• You can edit references in the reference area or in a dedicated window that you can open by choosing Reference : Edit from the element menu. You only need to use legal reference field tags at the beginning of each reference line (e.g. #Author:). If SuperMemo is not sure if your changes should apply to the current element only, or to all elements that use the reference, it will ask you
• You can quickly modify (i.e. set, merge, and delete) the references across a number of elements. To do that, open them in the element browser, right-click your mouse and choose:
  • Process browser> : Reference : Set reference to set the same reference to a subset of elements,
  • Process browser> : Reference : Merge reference to add reference fields to a subset of elements,
  • Process browser> : Reference : Delete reference to remove reference fields from all elements in the subset
• References no longer clutter your HTML files. In the past, the size of references would often be greater than the length of the text itself
• Reference registry keeps the references (see below), and their individual text fields are stored in the text registry
• References are added to HTML texts at load time, so that you can still have references located at the bottom of your texts as in earlier versions of SuperMemo
• Adding an existing reference to an element (e.g. with Reference : Link from the element menu) does not add to the size of the collection

Important! Do not add your own non-reference texts below the horizontal bar marking the reference area. All reference field area is owned by SuperMemo. Any modifications to that area will be treated as changes to reference fields. Changes that do not conform with reference field formatting will be discarded without warning.

Figure: References help you quickly recover the context of a given element as well as track its source and build a list of citations. In the picture, an extract from an article on sleep and dreaming. Blue marks an extract produced from the presented text. Yellow marks the search string (i.e. REM-on cells) that was used in Search : Find elements (Ctrl+F) to find all the elements (including this one) containing the string. Pink marks the reference area (consisting of the #Title, #Author, #Date, #Source, #Article, #Parent, and #Concept group fields), which will propagate to all children elements (extracts and clozes) generated from this element.

Figure: References are kept in a dedicated registry while their individual text fields (e.g. #Title, #Author, #Date, #Source, etc.) are stored in the text registry, and thus are available for global text searches. In the picture, reference registry holds 71,791 members. Those highlighted in yellow are references of downloaded images. The remaining references describe imported articles. The selected Quantum Biology reference describes and article imported from Nature Physics in Feb 2013. The element list panel (bottom-right) displays topics generated from that article. All those topics share the same reference.

Editing references

You an use Reference: Edit in SuperMemo Commander, however, you can also edit references in the reference area (which is pink in the default stylesheet). You can safely delete reference fields, but you need to decide if that change should be local (for that element only) or global (for all elements using this reference). You will not be able to delete #Article, #Parent: or #Concept group fields because they are added automatically to the reference section (i.e. they are not part of the reference itself). You can freely change the text of references. Illegal changes are all changes that do not comply with the reference format, e.g. lines that do not start with reference field tags, or lines that start with unknown reference field tags (e.g. #Country). If you are unsure how this process works, import a single article from Wikipedia to a newly created collection, create some extracts and play with editing to see how references are processed.

Image references

Image references are created automatically when importing from the web or from an HTML document. In SuperMemo 16, unless you imported images with whole references pages, duplicate detection would depend on image names. If you renamed your images to make reuse easy, duplicate detection wouldn't work. This changed with SuperMemo 17. URLs are kept in the text registry which can accept a degree of "garbage" as text reuse is automatic. The adopted complex solution may make SuperMemo a bit slower when importing images from imported articles or when importing pictures from the web. However, your collection is unlikely to swell with multiple image duplicates. Duplicate imports are automatically prevented and the imported image is replaced with the stored original (wiki thumbs are replaced with their high-resolution originals).

Image references allow of searching for picture names along other texts in elements with Edit : Find elements (Ctrl+F).

You can find image references in the reference registry (choose Search : References from the main menu). Alternatively, you can first locate the image via the image registry (Search : Images from the main menu), and choose View : Reference from the registry menu (available with a right-click).

In the reference registry, to view the image related to a given reference, click Go to at the bottom of the window.

To see all elements associated with a given image/reference, click List at the bottom of either registry (image or reference).

Additional skills in incremental learning

Recognizing unsuitable texts

Best articles for incremental reading are fact-rich and context-rich. You need to develop your own rules for selecting quality reading material. Nothing can substitute for your own experience. You will learn to identify texts that are hard to process and yield lower reading efficiency.

Let's consider two extremes:

• Wikipedia: Wikipedia is great because it is crowd-sourced and many authors edit only a small section of a text in total abstraction of the rest of the article. This is why even a small portion of the text (as in incremental reading) will usually contain all relevant context
• Fiction: Fiction is best read linearly and you can just use a paper bookmark in a paper book to do as well as you would do with incremental reading

Many articles fall in between Wikipedia and fiction extremes. Where Wikipedia would say "the http protocol", a typical article might just say "the protocol" (if "the" is clear from preceding passages). Some text are peppered with "as I mentioned in the previous chapter", or "go to the next section", or "the three points explained in the previous chapter", etc. Abuse of working memory in text writing makes incremental reading difficult. This means that if authors use a lot of "referential ambiguity", the texts are not good for incremental reading. Example ambiguity keywords: "the", "they", "he", "it", etc.

Many articles are also filled with irrelevant chaff (super-memory.com isn't impervious to that weakness). Too much beating about the bush without clearly stating the conclusions that are most important to the reader. "Speculative philosophy" might be a good inspirational read, but probably not for incremental reading. You need to decide.

Some narratives should just best be read passively. They may be a compilation of facts that are generally obvious. In such cases you can just read and dismiss. Or you can read and schedule another review in a month or in a year (if you worry you miss something important). Or you can try to write, in your own words, a sentence or two on what new things you have learned from the narrative. Your sentence would shortly extract the quintessence from an otherwise lengthy passage. If it is meaningful and quintessential, you shall find little trouble with locating keywords suitable for clozing.

You need to develop your own rules for deciding which articles are good for reading. The chief rule might be: import anything that looks interesting, start reading, and if you recognize tell-tale problems, just deprioritize or delete or fish for a few highlights and then delete.

Remember that you need to differentiate between unsuitable texts and difficult texts.

Handling incomprehensible articles

In incremental reading, you will often encounter material that is difficult to understand. You will need to develop analytical skills that will help you identify the reasons for the difficulties. If the culprit is the author, delete the article. If you need to digest other pieces of your collection first, delay the article. If you need more knowledge, delay the article and import more knowledge that will be needed to boost understanding. Do not forget that some texts make an inherently poor material for incremental reading (e.g. descriptions of scientific experiments, mathematical derivations, programming examples in source code, case studies, etc.). In such cases, use traditional methods of thorough analysis, summarize results of your analysis, and use SuperMemo to keep track of your own summaries. See: Recognizing unsuitable texts (incl. example).

This is how you can approach complexity in incremental reading:

1. Start reading the article from the top. Once you find a difficult fragment, analyze it, and diagnose the reasons for your comprehension problems
2. If the rest of the article does not depend much on the difficult fragment, extract it, and keep on reading
3. If the rest of the article cannot be understood without understanding the difficult fragment choose one of the following:
   • if you need more knowledge to understand the fragment: postpone the article (Learning : Reschedule from the element menu or Ctrl+J)
   • if the fragment is hopelessly intricate and leaves no hope for the future (e.g. because of wrong grammar, wording, formulation, logic, etc.), delete the article, and search for alternative material
4. If you decide to postpone the article with Ctrl+J, decide what new knowledge you will need before getting back to the difficult fragment. List dictionary entries, encyclopedia articles, articles on the net that you will need to process before going any further. Schedule the search for materials as separate topics or try to search for new knowledge instantly
5. Estimate the earliest time when you hope you will be able to understand the difficult article and use the appropriate interval with Ctrl+J. If the article includes high priority knowledge, it is always better to err on the safe side and provide a too early review

Randomizing repetitions

You can execute outstanding repetitions in a subset. If you would like to use a random sequence, follow these steps:

1. open the element subset in the browser
2. choose Random : Randomize browser on the browser menu (Shift+Ctrl+F11)
3. choose Learn on the browser menu (Ctrl+L)

Read toolbar

You can display the Read toolbar by clicking the Read tab at the bottom of the element window (at Middle or higher level).

Figure: The Read toolbar at the bottom of the element window. It features options used in incremental reading

Toolbar buttons

• Paste article (Ctrl+N) - paste a new article from the clipboard to the current collection
• Remember extract (Alt+X) - use the selected part of the text to create a new element and introduce this new element into the learning process. This is one of the most important options used in incremental reading. Use Alt+X on a selected text to tell SuperMemo that the selection is important and that you want to better remember it in the future
• Schedule extract (Shift+Alt+X) - use the selected text to create a new topic and schedule its review on a selected day with a selected priority. Schedule extract is the same as Remember extract but you can manually select the first interval, priority, and more
• Remember cloze (Alt+Z) - create a new cloze deletion element based on the current keyword selection and introduce that new element into the learning process

  Example: You can convert the following sentence:

  In 1947 the UN voted to divide Palestine into Arab and Jewish states

  to question:

  In 1947 the UN voted to divide Palestine into Arab and [...] states

  by:

  1. selecting the word Jewish and
  2. choosing Cloze (or pressing Alt+Z).

  In addition to Extract (above), this is the most important option of incremental reading.

• Schedule cloze - create a new cloze deletion and schedule it for repetition on a selected day
• Task extract - use the selected part of the text to create a new task element and put this element on the current tasklist
• Split article - split the article into multiple topics using various chapter markers such as headlines, horizontal lines, Wikipedia sections, SuperMemo splitmarks, etc. This can substantially accelerate decomposition of very long articles and prioritization of article chapters
• E-mail (Shift+Ctrl+E) - send the element or the selected text via e-mail (you can annotate the element or comment on the selected text)
• E-mail FAQ - use the selected text as the basis of an FAQ question, and send the answer to the question's author. Your response will automatically be added to an FAQ file of your choice. It can also produce a Wiki version. All FAQs at SuperMemo Website have been created by means of E-mail FAQ. Many FAQs at SuperMemoPedia have been created using this option as well
• Highlight - highlight the currently selected text
• Change highlight style - change the highlight style (i.e. font, font style, font size, font color, and text highlight color)
• Ignore (Shift+Ctrl+I) - ignore the selected text in reading by marking it with the ignore style
• Delete before cursor (Alt+\) - delete texts before the cursor (e.g. after processing it)
• Delete after cursor (Alt+.) - delete texts after the cursor (e.g. footnotes, external links, literature references, etc.)(SuperMemo references located at the bottom of the text are not affected)
• Set read-point (Ctrl+F7) - mark the selected text as the point from which you will resume reading the next time you return to the presented article. In incremental reading, you rarely need to use Set read-point as all extract, cloze, highlight, and other operations will automatically set the read-point for you
• Go to read-point (Alt+F7) - go to the text that has been selected as the read-point
• Clear read-point (Shift+Ctrl+F7) - remove the read-point from the currently processed text

One memory, one action

In incremental reading, you achieve highest efficiency if your process knowledge in small steps separated in time. This way you can accomplish a good memory effect at little processing effort. However, many users fall into traps of inefficiency where too little or too much work is done on a subject in a single review.

Futile review

Futile review is an example of insufficient work done (one action, zero memory). Futile review is born in this mental scenario: you see a topic and think: I am in no mood for this material now. Let's execute Next repetition. This is wrong! You must take action or you will loop into wasting time and learning little! It is a cardinal sin to execute processing operations without actually learning anything. When a topic arrives, you may have a dozen of excuses: "I do not like this one. Let's do it tomorrow". Or "I am too sleepy for this one". Or "This one will take too much time." If you find yourself in a loop and constantly rescheduling the same topic, or spending time rescheduling a number of topics, you are hurting the efficiency of learning! This is the time that could be spent on more productive steps.

If you do not want incremental reading to become a waste of time, you must always take some action when you see a topic. For example:

• read a sentence and delete it, or mark as ignore, or extract it
• if the article is not vital for your further progress, set low priority (e.g. 99%)
• for the material that you won't have time for in a month or more, set the interval (e.g. to 333 days)

In other words, either make tiny inroads into the text, or mark it clearly as low priority or to-be-done later. Consider also Delete or Done!

Item perfectionism

Another facet of the same problem is taking too many actions on a single piece of information. It is highly inefficient to work on colors, fonts, pictures, priorities, etc. during a single repetition. All those actions can be spread over time. Naturally, setting the right priority is one of the most important steps. Perhaps a piece of information is not important enough to ever squeeze through your crowded learning. If so, you will save tons of time on not doing colors and styles.

Here also you should remember: one memory, one action. Each time you review a piece of information, you are allowed to do an edit, font change, template change, concept group change, etc. However, unless you can do all your actions in a single burst of machine gun keyboard strikes, or unless some actions are associated with learning new things, you should rather limit your actions to a single step per single repetition.

One memory, one action rule demands that every operation in incremental learning should leave a trace in your memory. It also says that one operation on a piece of data is better than two operations at the same time

Example: incremental item structuring

The following item may look like a violation of the 20 rules:

Question: Inflammation is produced by eicosanoids and cytokines. Eicosanoids include (1) prostaglandins that produce fever and vasodilation, and (2) [...] that attract certain white blood cells
Answer: leukotrienes

However, the 20 rules were written in 1999 for classical SuperMemo. Incremental learning is incremental across the spectrum of rules and principles. In particular, formulating items and building understanding are incremental too.

According to the one memory, one action principle, the presented item will assume its final shape some time in the undefined future (or never, if its priority is not high enough). It must be processed incrementally due to the following factors:

1. incremental build up of comprehension, and
2. incremental reformulation that requires time.

The 20 rules say "Do not memorize until you understand", however, understanding is also an incremental process. Converting this item to plain "What eicosanoids attract white blood cells?" might make sense only if the student fully understands and remembers the hierarchy of inflammation factors, and involved eicosanoids. If this is not the case, carrying the context in the shape of this complex item is a form of transitional stage between a topic and an item. The item still asks the question vital for active recall. However, it also makes sure that full context is provided until the rest of the knowledge structure is firmly established in student's mind. In incremental reading, the order of reading is often chaotic, the understanding is incremental, and the effort to build a solid knowledge structure is gradual too.

In addition to the incremental buildup of comprehension, extensive edits of items are costly (esp. a total rewrite of the item to a plain question). In fact, one of the main advantages of incremental reading is the minimum need for typing. This is why we use electronic sources in the first place (instead of just books that offer no disadvantage when entire items are typed in anyway). This is why an important efficiency principle in incremental learning is to minimize edits by complying with the one memory, one action principle.

Let us see how the presented item might evolve in successive repetitions. Note that all edit steps my proceed only with solidification of related knowledge (i.e. a single repetition may actually bring no edits at all). The execution of those steps will also be somewhat dependent on item priority. High priority items will receive more exposure, more processing and will demand better formulation quality.

Take 1: original complex item

Figure: A cloze deletion related to inflammation, with a formulation that seems to violate the 20 rules. This cloze will be improved incrementally over many repetitions along the principle: "one memory, one action"

Take 2: moving a clue to the answer field

Question: Inflammation is produced by eicosanoids and cytokines. Eicosanoids include (1) prostaglandins that produce fever and vasodilation, and (2) [...]
Answer: leukotrienes (that attract white blood cells)

Take 3: removing the prelude

Question: Inflammation: Eicosanoids include (1) prostaglandins that produce fever and vasodilation, and (2) [...]
Answer: leukotrienes (that attract white blood cells)

Take 4: bare bones item

Question: Inflammation: Eicosanoids include (1) prostaglandins, and (2) [...]
Answer: leukotrienes

Further reading

• Doubts about incremental knowledge structuring
• Knowledge Darwinism

Learning lists

Lists and sets are difficult to remember. It is hard to remember the whole set of countries that belong to the European Union. When learning lists, you should rather decompose the problem into smaller subproblems.

Let us consider an example in which you want to memorize the entire sequence of letters in the alphabet. It won't be very effective if you use the following item:

Question: What is the sequence of letters in the alphabet?
Answer: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z

You will notice that you frequently stumble on parts of the sequence and need to stop repetitions just to exercise the entire sequence in the traditional way (like we all learn poems by rote).

However, you can approach this in a way that guarantees quick effects:

Question: What is the sequence of letters in the alphabet between A and E?
Answer: A, B, C, D, E

Question: What is the sequence of letters in the alphabet between D and H?
Answer: D, E, F, G, H

Question: What is the sequence of letters in the alphabet between G and K?
Answer: G, H, I, J, K

etc. etc.

After 2-3 weeks of repetitions, you may take on an extra task of recalling the whole sequence after each repetition of these simplified items. This will make sure you can recite the entire alphabet quickly. You will also frequently rehearse that parts of the sequence that are harder for your memory (e.g. V, W, X, Y, Z) as opposed to those that are much simpler (e.g. A, B, C, D, E).

Practical problems with memorizing lists

You may develop a good methodology for memorizing lists in SuperMemo. However, you may later discover that the memorized lists are not very useful in real life, or worse, your memory may fail you when you undergo a baptism of fire. You already know that list should not form an answer to a question. In a list A, B, C, SuperMemo needs to separately understand your difficulties with linking A and B, B and C, etc. You can use cloze deletion to learn lists using multiple items. For example:

Parent template topic/extract:

A B C

Items generated with cloze deletion:

Item 1:

Question: [...] B C
Answer: A

Item 2:

Question: A [...] C
Answer: B

Item 3:

Question: A B [...]
Answer: C

It is important to know that Item 1 above may make you fail to answer with A to the question C if you only learn to answer Item 1 by understanding the association of B with A. In such cases, you will need even more work by formulating items: A-B (where A is the question and B is the answer), A-C, B-A, B-C, C-A, and C-B. Although you will get six items instead of one