Here's tip for reviewing RTK or Anki stuff in general:

Ritalin.

A friend of mine who's studying medicine uses it when he has exams. I told him my reviews were harder and harder to do and that it was piling up to an undesired amount.

Did 350 or so reviews in little over an hour, which, for me, is pretty dang great.

aaronvanvalen Wrote:Here's tip for reviewing RTK or Anki stuff in general:

Ritalin.

A friend of mine who's studying medicine uses it when he has exams. I told him my reviews were harder and harder to do and that it was piling up to an undesired amount.

Did 350 or so reviews in little over an hour, which for me is pretty dang great.

What?! You're recommending us to take drugs? Err... I'd rather not...

Ritalin is used for people with ADHD, and you´re using it with RTK reviews!?
Either this is a joke, or you´re an idiot! =)

Hehe, that's funny. It's no more absurd to take ritalin as a study aid than it is it to give to a child.

Though I don't see how doing 350 reviews is helpful. It would better to just do 50 or so a day. The cards will eventually go down.

aaronvanvalen Wrote:Here's tip for reviewing RTK or Anki stuff in general:

Ritalin.

A friend of mine who's studying medicine uses it when he has exams. I told him my reviews were harder and harder to do and that it was piling up to an undesired amount.

Did 350 or so reviews in little over an hour, which, for me, is pretty dang great.

Wow, you're an idiot.. This is not the place I would expect these sorts of posts to show up...

This is spectacularly bad and irresponsible advice. Ritalin is basically speed. It has a strange side effect on young people with ADHD that it helps them focus, but it's pretty much against all doctor recommendation to take it past the age of 13. It can lead to horrible meth and speed addiction.

If Ritalin helps you focus, its means something is depressed in your brain and you have a chemical imbalance somewhere, because as other have said, it's actually a speeder. Maybe you should be looked at for undiagnosed ADD.

While I'm not against possible use of a stimulant as a study aid, Ritalin is both a very powerful drug and has great potential for abuse, dependence and long-term health problems. It's also a controlled substance, and the way your first post is written makes me believe you're acquiring it without a prescription, possibly from your friend. This is illegal, and both the supplier and the user can get into trouble this way. My advice would be to try find a milder, over the counter stimulant, or to look at any behaviors that may cause you to find it difficult to review (lack of sleep is common), or to see a doctor about possible legitimate medical problems that would affect your concentration.

I appreciate your concerns fellas. Rest assured, this is not a habit, nor can it become one as my supplies are limited. I was merely interested in its effects on studying, and I must admit, these were pretty damn impressive. This also was not a serious piece of advice to encourage you to all obtain some Ritalin in order to take our studies to the max. A-duh.

For a daily task such as the one we have laid upon ourselves it would be a more than somewhat silly thing to do. However, I do believe that it is not harmful if used with caution and only at times when one has to perform under pressure, study wise.

The question is, does your more efficient reviewing help better with long-term retention?

If you think it helps you with your reviews, that's great, but you should really get them properly from a real doctor. When I first entered college, I soon flunked out, and later began to suspect I had undiagnosed ADD. I got a doctor to prescribe me some medication, and then I went to a different school and was able to graduate with honors.

I don't know about where you live, but here in the United States its very easy to get a doctor to prescribe something like that to you. There's not really any real test that can perform, so you only have to answer a few questions the "right" way. However the important thing is that you have a doctor looking over you. At a few points while I was on my medication, they had some concerns about my blood pressure, and I also lost a lot of weight. After 2 years of taking it, I decided to stop because I found that I really didn't need it anymore. But it really is important to talk this over with a doctor because you don't know what kind of side effects you might experience, and it may be something that you don't even notice.

http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/news/...mart_drugs

Performance enchacing drugs seem quite common for sportsmen. I can see the possibility of something similar happening with academics or students under pressure.

Who's that mathematician Paul Erdős? He used performance enchancing drugs.

I don't have a problem with it, provided you are informed about what you are doing. People should be left to make their own decisions as free responsible people. As for me I'll stick with caffine and the occasionally sugary reward!

It's funny because so many children have had their lives messed up, misprescribed medicines like Ritalin. Ha ha.

nest0r Wrote:It's funny because so many children have had their lives messed up, misprescribed medicines like Ritalin. Ha ha.

Actually they already have problems with this in the US at universities.

350 cards in an hour isn't actually all that impressive... It's good, but not good enough to warrant use of drugs. 1000 cards in an hour? Yeah, then I might be interested. (Not really, I only add stuff I need in my SRS, so I rarely get over 40 reviews in a day.)

kanjiwarrior Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:It's funny because so many children have had their lives messed up, misprescribed medicines like Ritalin. Ha ha.

Actually they already have problems with this in the US at universities.

Yes. Actually, this does tie interestingly into the topic of SRSing--for me, what interested me about the SRS was the idea of pacing and longevity and a sort of mood-free independence when it comes to learning, rather than relying on short-term cramming fueled by god-knows-what that makes one feel reliant on protean moods or Red Bull or whatever your poison is.

Ha, I love Tobberoth's response. Eminently practical, as always. ;p

Oh, and to put what I wrote above in another way: For me, the SRS is the new and best performance-enhancing drug, and taking other drugs to fuel it would be like adding sugar to an energy drink. Bam! Nailed that analogy.

Ritalin is pretty similar to either speed or cocaine. I think it's coke. Anyway, drugs are bad mmmkay?

Using psychostimulants to learn Japanese...

I can finally wear that t-shirt that says "I've Heard It All", woo! It's been collecting dust in my closet, waiting for this thread

I take Ritalin as an adult, but not for ADHS, but for narcolepsy because Provigil does not work for me. I found myself awakening more than one time over RTK1, and it was not because of a boring chapter. Definitely not as funny as it sounds (imagine something like that happens to you at work...).

I can confirm though that it has a positive effect when you review a new Kanji for the first time (e.g. when it expires after three days). Actually, I learn Kanji as some kind of "training" to stimulate my always-tired brain, and together with the medication it actually works quite well in somewhat restoring my ability to concentrate and being able to keep my job.

However, this medication has some very nasty side effects when it wears off as an adult, in my case being irritated, some muscle spasms and showing signs of being very distracted (like a rebound of a person that has ADHS), and I live in permanent fear that I could develop a tolerance or dependency of that substance. I would never ever recommend it to anyone who does not desperately need it.

LOL, did anyone else think Ritalin was a new SRS?

(sorry, just a teenager that lives a very secured life XD)

Excerpt from http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/21776/

Quote:According to the piece, written by a group of ethicists, psychologists, and cognitive neuroscientists, "cognitive enhancement, unlike enhancement for sports competitions, could lead to substantive improvements in the world." While opponents have argued that the use of performance-enhancing drugs is unfair and could undermine the value of hard work, the authors say that these drugs fall into the same category as more common efforts to increase brain function, such as drinking a cup of coffee, or getting a good night's sleep, and thus should be regulated accordingly.
[...]
An informal survey conducted by Nature last year of 1,400 people from 60 countries found that 20 percent of respondents engaged in off-label use of drugs to enhance concentration and memory. Ritalin was the most popular, followed by Adderall. Both are prescribed for ADHD. The survey confirmed the potential for peer pressure; while 85 percent of respondents said that the use of these drugs by children under the age of 16 should be restricted, a third said they would feel pressure to give them to their children if others were using them.

Could be the next big thing in (language) learning but waiting seems the better option for now.

Maybe I shouldn't admit this (because it's probably silly) but I take fish oil since it contains DHA hoping that it'll help grow myelin ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myelin ) around the axons of certain neurons to improve memory. I have no way of knowing whether it helps or not, but the omega 3's are probably healthy anyway.

In reality though, I've found the following improves how well I can recall something: relaxation - if I start failing a bunch of cards and stressing out about them, it'll just get worse; break up reviews into shorter time periods - after a certain period of time reviewing, I'll get worse; not being tired - this is the main one. If I'm sleepy I can't learn new cards but also it makes my review go much worse; Mt. Dew - either the caffeine or the sugar or both seem to help, at least for a little while.

I can not focus in the morning without Starbucks and Crispy Cream. Where was the warning label? I might sue :/

b0ng0 Wrote:drugs are bad mmmkay?

Obligatory (AND dubbed in Japanese!) http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/catego...51C5Rxy9pc

Ritalin? Bleh, no thanks. I prefer weed.