Ask someone if they would like to be able to remember anything they wanted to, and never forget it. Almost everyone would respond with a resounding “yes”.

Tell people they have to use Anki though, and you’ve just lost all of your new friends.

Anki is the world’s most popular Spaced Repetition System, or “SRS”. It’s basically just flash cards, but very optimized, very customizable, and very basic.

I used to love Anki. I still love Anki on some level, but the problem with most SRS application is that the treat you like a number, and you can feel it. You will always fall short of the mathematical ideal that is required by the Great Sky-Anki. Reviews are stressful, the UI is stressful, and god forbid you EVER miss a day.

Note: this article might sound very negative towards Anki. I have used Anki religiously for many years, raved about it to countless people, and still highly recommend it to people. However, most of the ideas below were born out years of frustration with Anki, so it ends up as the butt of quite a few jokes. I just want to say that I pick on it lovingly. ❤️❤️

Humane SRS

You see, as a society, we’ve really solved memory. We have these algorithms now — all you have to do is strip away your humanity, submit to the algorithm, sacrifice your mental health, never ever take a day off, and you can remember anything!

However, for most of us, that price is a little steep.

That’s why I took Anki’s SRS algorithm (actually, at the time of writing this, I took the next generation of their algorithm) and adapted it to work for humans. To embrace our humanity, and trick us into wanting to learn more.

I call it Humane SRS.

Humane SRS focuses on keeping you engaged. There are no due dates, and the algorithm is completely invisible. It adapts to you each and every day to bring you unique review sessions every time you use it. It works great whether you have 2 minutes or 2 hours. You can use it once a day or once a week. If you missed two weeks, we don’t punish you for that, we take that into account and turn it to your advantage, and you keep learning from day one.

Humane SRS takes all those annoying “dark patterns” from social media applications that try and hijack your attention, and applies them to your learning. Infinite scrolls that never end. Dopamine-optimized scheduling to keep you hooked and always looking for that next boost. Colors and sounds to keep you locked in. Every minute we can keep you off of social media and focused on learning is a win for you.

Note: Phrasing is a paid language learning application that will never support ads. Ads are the cancer of the internet and you can quote me on that. Our competition, however, will always be TikTok & Instagram & the like — and so we are fighting fire with fire. There is a reason you always accidentally open Instagram, but struggle to open Anki.

Humane SRS is optimized for enjoyment and amount learned. Anki is optimized for fewest cards possible and not forgetting anything. Duolingo is optimized for hours wasted and never making progress.

Humane SRS also understands language. We are not interested in an application that can help you memorize isolated facts, but are solely interested in how we can get you to learn and memorize entire languages. Languages are rich, interconnected, messy, intricate things. Phrasing is build for this from the ground up.

Metrics

Humane SRS employs four key metrics to personalize the learning experience:

• Seen Today: which words, word families, phrases, translations, and expressions have you seen today

• Potential Gain: if you were to have perfect recall of this word, how much would it impact the recall of all your expressions — or all your materials

• Performance Weighting: get a lot of cards wrong, see easier reviews; get a lot of cards right, see harder reviews

• Language Speeds: tell us which languages you’re prioritizing and we’ll take that into account

With these simple metrics, and a looooot of tweaking, we’ve created an algorithm that just feels great. When I used to use Anki, those last 10-20 cards were an uphill battle. I just could not wait to get done every single time — to the point where I would often end the session with just a few cards less.

With Phrasing, I’m in the opposite camp. I’m constantly telling myself “ok let’s just see what the next card is” for 20 minutes at the end of all my sessions. I’ll pull out my phone to study for 20 minutes before bed and be up an extra hour. It’s really that much of a difference.

New Cards

Phrasing introduces new cards in a semi-random manner. Each time you draw a new card, there is a “chance of new”. There are several factors (8 at the time of writing this) that go into your probability of getting a new cards — but they’re a trade secret.

Ok, they’re not actually that secret, but I believe the less you can feel the algorithm, the better the experience. I promise you, these factors are boring, and telling you them would be like explaining a magic trick. You’ll enjoy more not knowing!

The only thing I will mention is that each new card, up to 16 new cards per day, will reduce the chance of new. This means that everything else being equal, you’ll likely see more new cards in the beginning of your studies than at the end of your studies. So if you feel like it’s too many new cards in the first 10-20 reviews, don’t worry, it tapers off. We just want to make sure you’re moving forward every day that you open the app.

Conclusion

Humane SRS has been an absolute joy for me to use, and I’m happy to share it with the world! And I haven’t even hardly mentioned the best part: if you’re learning multiple languages, it will actually work even better. I’m documenting my progress learning 18 languages all with Phrasing, all thanks to the Humane SRS

If you’ve tried Anki in the past, but struggled with the habit; or if you’re learning multiple languages and want to accelerate your progress; or even if you’re just learning one language, and want to get the benefits of spaced repetition without the stress — sign up for phrasing today.

To fluency, and beyond!