To remember everything you learn, surrender to this algorithm (2008)

Also, if Anki is open-source, I'm surprised that there is no unofficial port that uses SM-17. But maybe I'm just ignorant of how much work that would involve.

For every word you want to learn, add a few idiomatic and representative sentences in Anki. You can do the same for every new grammatical concept you want to learn.

And don't forget to use Anki's text-to-speech tools to practice listening as well as speaking.

Does it replace other forms of learning entirely? No, but it can be a great component of learning a new language.

Instead of just 1 to 1 vocab mapping, look for chinese tv shows that you enjoy and start to slowly build up vocabulary by mining sentences.

Then when you do reviews, not only will you remember the vocabulary, you will also remember when it occurred in the story and have a cool memory of some of your favorite tv shows / books / etc.

To your first point, it has basically become a habit for me. The key is to really commit to it for the first several weeks and establish the habit, then you won't feel tired of it as reviewing your cards daily becomes something you "just do".

Definitely agree with point 2. The Anki practice really shines when I combine it with my conversational practice. Memorizing the words alone doesn't make me a better speaker, but it does mean there's a lot fewer "what's the word?" moments in the middle of a conversation.

I believe Anki memorization + regular conversational practice is second only to full immersion as the best learning strategy.

I'm pretty sure Anki is FOSS, though perhaps you just don't like the AGPL?

It seems like you skim through an article, extract a few facts, and add them to your memorization schedule. Would it really help you summarize the article, or help you synthesize the arguments and follow the logic leading to a conclusion?

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoQoeK53bP8

The second principle is the spaced repetition. That works for learning the muscle memory as well as the memorization, but let's just address memorization.

First I divide a piece into arbitrary sections, often pages but in information-dense music you've got to go a couple lines at a time. I do not usually divide at a sensible musical stopping point, because we remember the starts and ends of what we do much better than the middles. Choosing weird places to start and end helps get some of those middles into our heads; plus it's really easy to mentally track what you've done if it's at a page or line boundary.

Then, with sections A through, say, D, I'll go in roughly this order, with "A" meaning I play all notes in section A in the proper sequence, even if I have to wait a few seconds sometimes to recall what happens next.

A A A; B B B A A; C C C B B A; D D D C C B A; D D C B; D C; D

...adjusting sometimes to accommodate the different information densities of the different sections. After this you'll need some mental downtime because it sucks a lot out of you to recall so much. Later you can do sections E through H, etc.

By the time you've done that, you're halfway to your goal. You can then start increasing the tempo toward performance quality by responsible metronome practice. I like to do

(1) the above routine out of tempo, waiting as long as necessary before notes

(2) the above routine at any tempo with metronome, doesn't matter how ridiculously slow

(3) increasing the tempo gradually from there, not deviating from the "note-perfect" requirement

Also, do you continue to use it for math-like subjects?

Great job on your exams though!