Closing the loop on explorations

Until recently, I did not have a proper way to save links or interesting ideas that I stumbled upon in life. It was with this lack of system that I saved a link to Anki as a tab on my iPad, probably around 2016 or 2017. I don’t remember why I exactly I had saved it, but I remember it being mentioned somewhere and sounded interesting and like something I would want to look into more.

It wasn’t until January of this year, 2021, that I decided to go through those links that had been sitting on my iPad for multiple years and either finally close them out or take an action on them. Interestingly, it took about a year after I moved to part-time employment before I mustered up the energy for this exercise.

This was how I really discovered Anki and spaced repetition as a concept for the first time. I immediately was intrigued and began experimenting with the tool. Now, I’ve been using the tool almost daily since February, and my interest in that tool has led me to all sorts of other interesting and useful tools that I am using on daily basis today (like Obsidian and Readwise).

If it weren’t for my unplanned desire to go through those links and the luck of having that tab not being closed out, I don’t know that I would have stumbled into Anki or these other tools and their respective communities.

The lesson that came out of this for me is that I need to “close the loop” on these types of explorations. Meanderings on the internet can lead to all sorts of unique ideas and resources that you had never heard of or thought about before. Finding a way to triage and digest those loose threads properly is an important part of getting the most out of all that the world has to offer.

There is an alternative side which is difficult, the feeling that you need to properly track and log everything or else you may not reap unknown future benefits from it. I have definitely fallen prey to this over-thinking, but I think a balance is achievable.