- Why The Way We Read Sucks, And How To Fix It: Part 1
- Why The Way We Read Sucks and How to Fix It: Part 3 — The Unified Reading Process
- Why The Way We Read Sucks and How to Fix It: Part 4 — Why SRS Personal Development Books?
- Why The Way We Read Sucks and How To Fix It, Part 5: Examples Shown and Questions Answered
This is part 5 of a multipart series that is boldly freaking going where no series has gone before. Go here to read the series from the start. And here to read the previous installment.
OK, so after all that talk, let me show you a few examples of the SRS cards I’ve been using with the Unified Reading Process (URP). Remember that the URP was designed (which seems a bit of a posh word for how simple a thing it is, but, there you go) by yours truly to solve problems with both (a) native-level languages and (b) sucky-(not-yet-native)-level languages.
So, while it is a single process, it does have two rather different motivations, and this produces two broad types of cards:
- (a) With native-level languages, one is trying to remember ideas through vocabulary.
- (b) With sucky-level languages, one is trying to remember vocabulary through ideas.
(b) is the type of thing we typically discuss here at AJATT. So, it uses the same types of SRS cards as we’ve been talking about all this time. No changes, no surprises. In this article, we’ll focus mostly (though not exclusively) on type (a)
But before we hit the example cards, let me answer a couple of your questions all nice like.
Do you use one massive deck for all of your SRSing, or switch off between decks?
Currently, I have a bunch of different decks. I think this is definitely the way to go, as:
- Different subjects lend themselves to different types of SRS cards, and mixing them all together would just be jarring.
- Splitting helps with performance management and analysis.
- I switch subjects by mood. I mean, logic.
- Surusu makes it very easy for me to switch between decks, both when adding and doing reps. You like that plug?
My current deck breakdown is:
- Japanese – the “original glazed” deck. It contains Japanese sentences.
- Kanji – Heisig-style kanji reviews. I still learn new kanji and reinforce old ones. You never stop learning, you just stop sucking.
- Math/Science/Engineering – very broad…basically anything technical or scientific goes here…I also have quite a few math cards
- Humanities– extremely broad; this has everything from legal stuff to funny internet quotes, to insight on random social issues. I even have the occasional piece of English vocabulary (like “anodyne”…didn’t know what that was…).
- The English vocab thing is made even more ironic by the fact that one American blogger has decided that my accent is so weird and Christian-Baled up that I could not possibly be a native speaker of English…I guess those AJATT “method-acting” chickens have finally come home to roost and Japanese really is my native language now? Maybe I should just start cross-dressing…I always did enjoy hanging out in women’s restrooms with the freaking…couches and TVs and herbal tea and free massages from sporty Swedish women…
- No?
- The legal vocab is there because on rare but significant occasions, it helps me in Japan to be a bit more-eloquent-than-average – as if to demonstrate that “I-am-not-a-roll-over-play-dead-and-cry-myself-to-sleep gaijin, so if you try to brush me off with a spurious explanation you just made up, life will get difficult for you”…I know that sounds jerky, but even in Japan, once every 6~12 months or so, I find the need to project stubbornness and erudition at the same time. Of course, I’m bluffing because I’m not actually erudite or stubborn, but it works every time – people treat you differently when you signal that your crap threshold is low).
- No, really, though…women’s restrooms are…the shiz.
- Original Ideas – I just throw my own original ideas in here…Everything from long-term projects, to Surusu feature concepts.
- Business – business vocabulary and good ideas from business books and blogs.
- As a programmer, I was “raised” to look down on business people. After reading Johnson O’Connor’s vocabulary research (executive summary: there apparently exists a powerful correlation between vocabulary and social position), I started to realize that many “business”-type people used vocabulary that I didn’t actually know well enough to use myself. (I think Paul Graham also raised this point once, actually). It occurred to me that they were communicating things that may actually be of some value to me; they weren’t just dumb people in suits throwing buzzwords at each other. I mean, there’s that, too, but that’s not all there is to them.
- Cantonese – Cantonese sentence cards, using a format that I developed (again, a rather OTT word to describe something very simple) after my trip to Taiwan. Basically, it’s full of sentence cards. The format still uses sound, but is much less labor-intensive than some of the Canto cards I’ve previously shown. Look out for another Chinese Project Notes post on these.
- Personal Development – the main difference between this and the “Business” deck is that it is purely focused on inspiration, where the business deck is more about vocabulary and procedure. The purpose of this deck is to increase my self-efficacy (self-confidence?); it is pure “positiveness”. It contains quotes from PD books, affirmations, afformations…all that good stuff. I’M A GOOD PERSON! LoL.
- Mandarin – Mandarin sentences. Originally, a lot like the Japanese deck in format, but has since morphed to be more like the Cantonese deck because, me loves that sound. Chinese cards + sound = gold.
- Hangul – I just wanted to learn to read Hangul. All this contains is the alphabet. This is an extremely low-priority deck for me. It doesn’t even contain all the Hangul yet.
- Recipes – I brainwash myself with good recipes: this influences me to default to healthy food. I usually read recipes for ideas, but I never follow the recipe to the letter myself. I just take its main concepts and then put my own spin on it. A metaphor for all reading, perhaps?
- Unconfirmed/Questionable Cards – This contains mostly Cantonese cards I made by transcribing movies, where I have things I’m not sure about, but I don’t want to just throw the card away, so I save the card here in order to ask a native speaker when I get the chance.
- Pre-Dump– This just contains things I want to throw into the SRS, unprocessed, to maybe make “proper” cards for later.
- It gets a LOT of deletion. I am not sentimental – that kind of feeling holds too many people back, as does too much hypothetical (counterfactual?) thinking: “what if…”, “maybe”….No…not fun or useful now = no right to be in the SRS.
- When I’m at a loss for what to learn next, but want easy pickings, I just flip through this deck.
- If sentence-picking is fishing, then this is fish-farming. Rather than go out to the sea of Japanese/Chinese media, I have my own tank I can pick from any time.
- Links to Websites – Can you see a pattern here? The SRS being used less and less for its traditional/original purpose, and more like a card management system. Anyway, since the SRS I use (Surusu) is web-based, I’ve started adding links to websites I would like to get into the habit of visiting. This, for me, basically means sites in Chinese and Japanese.
- It’s easy to stumble upon a good site, but hard to find one when you’re looking for it. Also, simply throwing things into bookmarks doesn’t lead to sites getting seen, for me. Previously, I had been using a program to open sites randomly, but that got rather out of hand…websites opening left and right.
- A more streamlined alternative to using Surusu for storing websites is WhatPage, a web-based, no-install browser homepage rotator. Unfortunately, they have a ridiculously low limit on the number of websites you can store. So if you know of any alternatives, please let me know.
How do you score your cards?
I just kind of play it by ear, to tell you the truth. I use the scoring principles outlined by Dr. Woz at SuperMemo. Namely:
- 0 = Blank. Total. Memory. Blank.
- 1 = Well in’ dat cute…but it’s WRONG! (Two Stupid Dogs…anyone? Anyone?)
- 2 = Slightly Wrong
- 3 = Just…Barely…Right…By The Enamel of the Teeth
- 4 = Correct…amundo.
- 5 = Psssh…Piece Of Cake, Be Arch, Why You Even Be Showing Me This, Motherlover? You’d Best Believe I Come Correct, Son. Perfect! Flawless victory! Correct and Fast and Easy.
So basically a card is either correct or incorrect, but then within that binaryness, the 0~5 scale gives uz a finer-grained way of explaining the correctness. 0~2 is all incorrect, 3~5 is correct; it’s all a matter of degree and the specifics don’t matter too too much. SRSing isn’t so ossified a field that these things are hard and fast yet.
We are living in a golden, lawless age where no one’s telling you what to do*: enjoy your freedom. In any case, once you decide what constitutes correctness and incorrectness for your cards, then scoring is smooth sailing. The key is that you recognize that most decisions are ultimately arbitrary, that there’s nothing wrong with that, and that you have the right to start making some of these arbitrary decisions. You are the rules. That’s my take on it.
Besides, I don’t like other people controlling my whys, whens, whats, with-whoms and hows, because they’re not very good at it 🙂 .
*For example, some idiots went and decided that socks + slippers = lame, before I was even born. From birth, I have known that socks + slippers = a prudent foot-hygiene choice in any urban environment. But now, on top of making good decisions for myself, I’m beating off the social inertia of someone else’s ancient opinions. Is that what you want? 😉 Coz you’re asking for it! Don’t come asking me to make rules that don’t exist.
How would you grade something like a personal development quote card?
- If the quote is a cloze deletion, then I grade myself my ability to fill in the (one-word) blank, just like any other informational card.
- On the other hand, if the quote is in full view (no blanks), then I grade myself on the extent to which:
- I have internalized (i.e. am living) the content of the quote. So if, for example, I have been blowing a setback out of proportion, then a quote about setbacks would get a low score.
- The quote is boring me. So if it’s a quote that I’m not quite living up to, but that I have seen so much that it feels cliched, I’ll give it a big score anyhow to get it out of the way. Conversely, if the quote is feels very “fresh” to me, then it’ll get a somewhat lower score.
So many decks, do you go through them all every day?
I choose decks in order of fun/priority and I delete extensively. If I’m avoiding a deck, then I go on a deletion spree, and I keep deleting until the deck feels good again.
Also, while there are many decks, many of the decks contain only a handful of cards (80-20 rule) or are information-only decks, so…there are no reps to do as such.
So, no, I don’t necessarily touch every deck every day without fail 😉 . Rather than try to “work harder” to correct this, I instead tweak things to make it so that I want to touch the relevant decks — again, deletion is big here. Also, if, for whatever reason, time is short, then priority rules take over. Japanese is a top priority deck for me. Humanities is not.
Surusu does automated rep-capping and deck-switching for me, so a lot of the thought/selection/management burden is taken away.
Show us your cards, motherlover!: Actual Card Examples
Yeah, and it was your mother I was loving…jerkwad.
What? No…Um…OK card. The simplest way is to just give you a nice, pretty table, much like in “My First Sentence Pack”, except MFSP is even better.
To make things easier for myself, these cards do not have links to actual audio files (even where applicable). In a real, live SRS, they would…I just wanted to save myself a few steps since this article is so long already! … ‘Told you I was lazy 8)
So are you offended by the “jerkwad” part or the advertising?
| Deck | Front | Back | Notes |
| Japanese | テメエら人間じゃなええや！ | Don’t come to me with a note from your Japanese wife saying that this is a “very rude” phrase. I flipping know it’s rude, OK? That’s the point. She likes it when I talk to her like this. | |
| Japanese | 本日、営業部長に就任致しました大久保恆でございます。 | しゅう‐にん〔シウ‐〕【就任】 ［名］(スル)ある任務・職務につくこと。「取締役に―する」大久保恆（オオクボ ヒトシ） スピーチに強くなる!―ビジネスに役立つ スピーチが楽になる (特選実用ブックス) (単行本) |
There’s your precious 敬語. |
| Kanji | MUSK DEER a DEER that’s begging for you to SHOOT it! |
麝 | Yes, it’s the older format: the one that isn’t lazy kanji. |
| Kanji | QUARREL STAREeyes + quarrel | 睜 | A simpler format. Front has component names only, no explicit story (although one always seems to get made up in my head by just looking at the components). |
| Math/Science/Engineering | ##### Biochemistry. the substance acted upon by an enzyme. |
substrate Biochemistry. the substance acted upon by an enzyme. |
|
| Math/Science/Engineering | ＃＃＃＃ 熱の遮斷および保溫のために用いる、熱を伝えにくい材料。石綿・ガラス繊維・コルクなど。 |
だんねつ‐ざい【斷熱材】 熱の遮斷および保溫のために用いる、熱を伝えにくい材料。石綿・ガラス繊維・コルクなど。 |
|
| Math/Science/Engineering | この公式を因數分解せよ (x^2 + 2x + 1) |
(x + 1)^2 | Not MathML or anything. Not ideal for notation. But a start. |
| Math/Science/Engineering | 【×閏秒】天體観測をもとにした平均太陽時（世界時）と、原子時計ではかった國際#########時とのずれを調整するために加えたり引いたりされる1秒。→協定世界時 | うるう‐びょう〔うるふベウ〕【×閏秒】天體観測をもとにした平均太陽時（世界時）と、原子時計ではかった國際原子時とのずれを調整するために加えたり引いたりされる1秒。→協定世界時 | |
| Humanities | ＃＃＃＃ １ さいころばくちの親。また、ばくちの場所を貸して、寺銭をとる者。胴親。 |
どう‐もと【胴元／▽筒元】 １ さいころばくちの親。また、ばくちの場所を貸して、寺銭をとる者。胴親。 |
|
| Original Ideas | Deck rename | @Surusu | AJATT articles, Surusu features, etc. |
| Business | ・自分に厳しくしない→自分という子どもを育てていると思い、＠＠＠＠を使わない。 | ・自分に厳しくしない→自分という子どもを育てていると思い、否定語を使わない。
なまけもののあなたがうまくいく57の法則 (単行本（ソフトカバー）) 本田 直之 (著) |
Primary goal of this deck: increase effectiveness and efficiency.Contentwise, this deck is very close to the personal development deck, except that the PD deck contains only cards that are worded positively. |
| Business | ＠＠＠＠のある浪費に手を出さない | 常習性のある浪費に手を出さないなまけもののあなたがうまくいく57の法則 (単行本（ソフトカバー）)
本田 直之 (著) |
Lots of ideas from Seth Godin and the like go here as well. |
| Cantonese | 具有多元嘅種族 | [media: canto-london- 005.mp3] | Read the front; confirm my pronunciation against audio on the back.A contributor at RhinoSpike kindly supplied the audio in this case. |
| Personal Development | my compliments to Khatz for breaking down my resistance to motivational writing, that was not an easy task ^_^ | Source | Primary goal of this deck: increase self-efficacy.I also put compliments from people in this deck. |
| Personal Development | A setback is a setup for a #### | A setback is a setup for a comebackLes Brown | . |
| Personal Development | F = False E = Evidence A = Appearing R = Real |
Zig Ziglar | . |
| Mandarin | 飛 看大雪紛飛 卻再也找不回 | fēnfēi【紛飛】 （雪や花などが）ひらひら舞い落ちる． ¶柳絮liǔxù～/柳絮（りゅう じょ）が舞い落ちる．diǎnzhui【點綴】 （２）付き合いとしてする;間に合わせる． ¶我唱得不好,隨便哼hēng幾句～一下吧/私はうまく歌えませんが,お付き合いに歌わせていただきましょう． yīpiē【一瞥】 ★cōngcōng【匆匆】 ＊＊★★喝 ★dǎrǎo【打擾】 duōqíng【多情】 ★★yuánliàng【原諒】 ★wúliáo【無聊】 jìng huā shuǐ yuè【鏡花水月】 míliàn【迷戀】 jiān’áo【煎熬】 ★yōngbào【擁抱】 pòxiǎo【破曉】 ＊＊★醉zuì ＊＊★★杯（盃）bēi dānfēi【單飛】 ★húdié【蝴蝶】 ＊＊★握wò ★liángshuǐ【涼水】 ＊＊★涼（涼）liáng guǐmèi【鬼魅】 ★jǐngsè【景色】 bēizhōngwù【杯中物】 ＊＊燭（燭）zhú ★děnghòu【等候】 字級選擇 夜好深了 紙窗裡怎麼亮著 杯中景色鬼魅 我忘了我是誰 心情就像夜涼如水 花田裡犯了錯 說好破曉前忘掉 醉 怎麼會喝醉 美 因為你的美 愛匆匆一瞥不過點綴 當時空成為擁有你 唯一條件 我又醉 我的山水全部褪了色 多情的打擾請原諒我 |
This is an example of a song card. |
| Hangul | 국 | 국민대학관(國民大學館)’ | Extremely low-priority deck. |
| Recipes | 筍のわさびカルパッチョ レシピ | 材料 （ ２人分 ）筍 小１本
わかめ 適量 ○オリーブオイル・しょうゆ 各大さじ２ ○わさび 小さじ２ こしょう 少々 1筍はアク抜きして姫竹を殘すように皮をむき５ｍｍ位にスライスする。わかめは戻して水気を絞る。○を合わせて混ぜ溶かす。 2器にわかめを適量のせ、上に筍をバランスよくのせたら○を回しかける。お好みでこしょうを振っていただきます。 |
Food, baby.Yummy in my tummy.
This is an example of what I like to call a “static” deck, in that I don’t actually do reps on it; I just throw things here because it’s an easy way to data storage/management. I’m going to be using the SRS anyway, and it’s easy to run searches on my decks. |
| Unconfirmed/Questionable | 呢個手提電話係一件非常恐怖嘅武器 | 根據我嘅情報顯示，呢個手提電話係一件非常恐怖嘅武器料[Audio]
★wǔqì【武器】 武器．兵器．件;[ひとまとまりになったもの]批pī． 【補足】広く闘爭の手段にもたとえる． ¶用現代的～和技術jìshù來裝備zhuāngbèi軍隊/近代的な武器と技術で軍隊を裝備する． ¶把筆當做dàngzuò～/ペンを武器にする． ¶核hé～/核兵器． ¶化學huàxué～/化學兵器． ¶思想～/思想的武器． ★qíngbào【情報】 （１）（機密性を帯びた）情報．個． ¶軍事～/軍事情報． ¶刺探cìtàn～/情報を探る． ¶遞送dìsòng～/情報を送る． ¶蒐集sōují～/情報を集める． ¶提供可靠的～/信頼できる情報を提供する． ¶～員/諜報部員． ★kǒngbù【恐怖】 （２）恐ろしい．ぎょっとする． ¶感到～/恐怖を感じる． ¶昨晚他做了一個非常～的夢mèng/昨晩彼は恐ろしい夢を見た． xiōngbào【凶暴】 凶暴である． ¶脾氣～/性質が凶暴である． ¶～殘忍cánrěn/凶暴で殘忍である． hung bou hung bou ★bùmǎn【不滿】 不満である．不満に思う． ¶他對你的發言很～/彼は君の発言をとても不満に思っている． ¶～情緒qíngxù/不満の気持ち． yau me ye mun yi？ 有甚麼不滿？ |
Items remain in this deck until checked off with a native speaker.Usually, these are things taken/transcribed from raw native media.
Often, these have sound files attached. |
| Pre-Dump | 令人類可以賴以生存 | xìtǒng【系統】 （１）系統．システム．★wánshàn【完善】 （１）完全である．りっぱである． ★yōngyǒu【擁有】 yung yau yat go yun sin |
This deck undergoes heavy triage/deletion.Much of its current content is full, “raw” dictionary entries. |
| Links to Websites | YouTube- 舛添氏新黨結成へ 會見ノーカット（10/04/21） |
That’s about it. I look forward to your insight and feedback 🙂 .
Alternatively to using separate decks, if you use Anki, there is a function called “Inactive Tags.” I use this to ignore all categories of cards except the one I want to review in the current session.
Either with decks or categories though, splitting them up makes the reviews much more pleasant.
“Look out for another Chinese Project Notes on these.”
…Really!? Is it Christmas already? Can’t wait…
HI Katz,
very interesting article, which motivates me to use an SRS even more! I never thought about having a deck that shall motivate yourself 🙂 It’s such an inspiration to read through that article. I will try by myself to open even more decks for different topics 😛 ( especially one motivation one for those bad days -,.-A)
Are you only using Surusu? Cos I cannot add media into my cards there <.< Could it be my account is too old?
Greetz Alex
I think I understand what you are trying to do; the SRS program is the “sun” of your learning life, and the other subject “planets” revolve around it.
So I guess the question is: what is the shortest route from your reading material to your SRS? Although we seem to be pursuing the same goal, we are going about slightly different ways to get to it. Variety is good.
Here is what I have been doing until now: I keep one SRS database (My main database) that contains all of the questions and answers. I keep one other database that contains all of the unprocessed material that I want to read (That will eventually become flashcards). Within Supermemo this process is called “Incremental Reading.”
www.supermemo.com/help/read.htm
Basically Supermemo creates a “reading queue” for your reading material, and you slowly “digest” the article over time, turning interesting sections into extracts, and eventually into flashcards. If you do not have a text version of what you are reading, simply create a “bookmark” for the reading material as the piece of reading material. (For example: “Resume reading Popular Science April Issue page 12” could be a separate card).
Also good reading material for flashcard wording: www.supermemo.com/articles/20rules.htm
Hey Khatz, where are you sticking the Lazy Kanji cards? Just mixed in with the old heisig ones?
Very interesting, nice to get some behind the scenes action. My question though, is how do you grade something like a personal development card?
Khatz, the media for the Cantonese example is pointing to surusu. In other words, it’s not working, it just prompts you to download “displaymedia.php”
Khatz,
So do you do these decks everyday? I mean I often find it hard to just do the Japanese decks when I can find the strength!
Languages, business, technical material, recipes, humanities… Khatz, you’re like a modern Renaissance man 🙂
“飛 看大雪紛飛 卻再也找不回”
I spy with my little eye 王力宏 lyrics. Personally, I look up words I don’t know in lyrics when the mood strikes, but I don’t feel the need to SRS them as they come up every time I hear the song.
Also, why do you use Mandarin pinyin pronunciation keys for a Cantonese source?
Very insightful. Especially the part about grading — it’s obvious now that you’ve said it aloud but I would’ve regarded it as a huge problem.
I actually once got an idea of making a system in which I would store everything I learn. Sort-of-like SuperMemo’s Incremental Reading, except something that doesn’t make you want to jump out of the window. One that’d allow me to, for example, read scanned manga and easily mine sentences so that it’d preserve the page jpg for context etc. But I never got around trying to figure out how to code something like that.
Now I again realize that all this can be reasonably achieved by Surusu or Anki (listed in reverse alphabetical order to please Khatz 😀 ).
EggTimer is PC only software. For all the Mac users out there, I use Apimac, it’s awesome, and free. You can run dual timers, and use the built-in voice to say things to you when the time’s up (mine says “EXCELSIOR!”). www.apimac.com/timer/
Oh, c’mon! Socks and slippers??? ひっでぇwww
「Well in’ dat cute…but it’s WRONG! 」 Ancient~! Watched it all the time. ~(^◇^)/ぎゃはは
Aren’t relying too much on SRS? Honestly, I think it’s amazing how far you’ve gone with this memory system. Keep it up.
めっちゃ長い文も結構入れてるみたいですが、長いやつもちゃんと読むんですか？私だったらきっとめんどくさいと思って飛ばしてしまうだろうな・・・
great post. its really amazing if you can give cycle between that many decks a day!
I’m gonna try this on my discourse’s analysis theories studying. Anyway, about a good online bookmark, i’d say that for me so far (I’ive tried google, delicious and go on ) diigo.com is just perfect….
Thanks about this last post, Khatz…
“Do you use one massive deck for all of your SRSing, or switch off between decks?”
I could not help but admire the brevity, clarity, and structure of this question. I mean, it would be gold in any English learner’s SRS deck. Then I realized it was my own question. Verbatim, pasted from the part 4 post. (Except for the omitted hyphen between SRS and ing) My language learning idol/role model/hero/cult leader anonymously quoted me. Sweet. 我好感動!
www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/arts/25abroad.html?pagewanted=1&ref=general&src=me
I think what’s happened to French, will eventually happen to more and more languages as people discover the power of immersion and SRS.
Hey, Khatz.
Very inspiring and highly useful info here. Thank you.
I am a student of Mandarin. I have decent fluency, grammar, comprehension but I need to learn more hánzi big time.
I have perused many of the posts here but could not find the answer to the following:
What is a specific program I can use for SRS to learn Mandarin characters/sentences?
I am recently separating all-kanji decks from strictly nihongo decks.
The improvement is tremendous!
I guess it has something to do with not having the pressure to be able to write the kanji in the sentence or even read it. If I understand it, it’s good enough. And while in the kanji deck, I can go about slowly, burning them as well as I can in my memory, without the pressure to keep going to get to the real “immersion” (yeah, I am inputting sentences without having finished Heisig).
I mean, now everything’s easier. I just got off of a long long period with barely no immersion (constant exposition, yeah, but far, far away from immersion) and this was just the thing to get me back on track.
I’ve been currently playing around/adjusting my anki decks to my liking. So far so good. I find that having a few huge decks is way better than having many small ones,easier to organize, easier to do, and less time to do it in. I’ve found what works best for me is doing a good portion of srsing each day(1 hour each day) and rest is passive/reading/writing,etc in japanese. It’s worked really well but nowadays I’ve been finding more ways of making stuff more effective and less time consuming. I’m heading towards the 9 month mark here(8.9 months as stated in my main sentence deck, should be full 9 months within a few days or so). I remember when I started japanese, I wanted to be able to read it understand it,watch dramas,movies,animes,read mangs,play video games in japanese, be able to read transcripts,etc. Now that I can do that, I don’t feel I should stop there even. It’s a never ending journey but it’s not about the results it’s about the process. Making it seamlessly painless is the way to go.
Oh man Khatz, you always know just what to say to keep me motivated through all kindsa stuffs. It always comes at jus the right time man, jus the right time…
Btw, you had me on the floor wit that 2 stupid dogs reference, hahaha. That used to be my show “back in the day”
You know, I use Evernote for the non-language study stuff (recipes, inspiration etc.)- although lately I’ve been putting recipes on Pinterest because it’s fun to share them with people too.
I am aggressively organized because I deal with so much research data-
Voodoo Pad = organizing book notes before dumping them into DevonThink, works like a WIKI.
Papers = organizing my academic PDFs.
Zotero= organizing my list of sources – rethinking this, may try Bookends
DevonThink = for my dissertation materials- audio, photo, video, book notes, scanned field notes
Scrivener= only for lengthy projects, dump organized materials from DevonThink in there only when actively writing. Otherwise OpenOffice for writing.
Evernote- non research “data” or misc random academic thoughts.
Everything I create or discover anywhere gets filed with these 🙂