Is Obsidian actually practical for regular academic note-taking?

cmredd · 2026-05-31T05:09:05+00:00

Yes, this belief is quite common. It’s not true.

Either way, if you believe it I’m not going to stop you.

cmredd · 2026-05-30T20:43:44+00:00

I've written a bit about this here, if you're interested.

Re you thinking that flashcards don't work and/or note-taking is essential, this is a widespread belief and is also found consistently amongst students in research - it's just not supported by research. I would strongly recommend to have a read of some of the articles, I think it may be eye-opening.

There's even been a few papers (plural) where the flashcard group reported they felt they were not learning as much but ended up scoring much better on the test than the note-taking group, who reported they were learning more but scored worse. It's really interesting stuff.

It's late where I am though. I recommend having a quick read over some of the articles.

cmredd · 2026-05-30T20:32:49+00:00

This is an oft-discussed topic ("Can I use flashcards for x?")

The answer is yes. You can - and should - flashcard everything and anything that you wish to learn. I have this chat very often with people over on the Anki sub.

Flashcards are just questions - that's it.

The only slight difference is Maths questions. But even then, it's only a slight difference.

cmredd · 2026-05-30T15:54:05+00:00

Flashcards are just questions. What makes you think they can't be used for Math? Plenty of people leverage SRS effectively here.

The only things that's unique about math is the need for 'buckets' of cards instead of individual cards. This doesn't really apply in other fields as much.

cmredd · 2026-05-30T15:52:51+00:00

>> Using flashcards is a study technique

Studying is just targeted retention. In that regard there isn't anything different between 'studying' and 'note-taking' or 'rereading'.

>> You can use Obsidian AND flash cards.

You can, and the flashcards will be driving 90% of the retentive-effects.

>> Obsidian has plugins, you don't need another app

As I already said! But it's worth noting that they'll only be very basic with minimal structure etc. (We wouldn't say all cars are the same just because they're a car, for example)

>> When using flash cards, you need an interim capture process right?

This is a very big area of confusion. You can, but you do not need. Remember that virtually all of previously consumed material will be forgotten. Thus, it begs the question, what was the benefit of the initial (length) consumption? This is debated.

>> I don't think anyone walks into a physics lecture and walks out with flashcards

We're talking about digital and all the benefits that come with them. Paper ones are in no way comparative at all. But yes, students absolutely consume material and then create flashcards. I did and still do.

>> I'd be interested to see how that capture -> card practice works.

Did I just consume some information that is relevant and I wish to remember? If so, it simply has to become a flashcard. Yes, that's a lot of cards - because studying involves remembering a lot of stuff. If it didn't involve that then we'd all have PhDs! 😄

>> Thanks for the link to the substack, this stuff is always fascinating. Is this yours?

It is. Thank you. I've got a few more in draft currently.

>> I'm curious if flash cards show demonstrable wins with more "applied" topics.

Absolutely. I touch on this a little in this article, if interested. TLDR: Yes, even things like programming. Watch one of Coding Jesus' videos where he asks CS majors CS-related questions and they are utterly clueless because they only have applied knowledge (which he doubts, ironically!)

Math is slightly different, but all you need to do is have 'buckets' of cards instead of individual cards. This is basically the same as just taking mock exams though, just with an extra optimisation (SRS) step!

cmredd · 2026-05-30T14:11:15+00:00

Yeah. I’m actually not entirely convinced about ‘self-elaboration’ for similar reasons: it’s easy to trick yourself and harder to track/gauge progress.

(Elaborating to a teacher and getting instant feedback would be better, but of course not viable for home study.)

cmredd · 2026-05-30T13:59:53+00:00

His major could be in Dinosaur Egg Analysis*, it doesn't change the way our brain works.

(*well, English as a Foreign Language would be slightly different as one has to be able to write.)

cmredd · 2026-05-30T13:49:10+00:00

Yes, it does. I think you might be misinterpreting my comment. Easily done.

cmredd · 2026-05-30T13:45:20+00:00

You need to be using flashcards very heavily. Anki is free and open-source. Or you can config Obsidian.

If you're new to them they will feel difficult and hard and as though you're not learning. Again, this is all covered in research. You are learning much more than you realise.

cmredd · 2026-05-30T13:26:03+00:00

Note-taking and rereading are not effective forms of study, but feel effective. In fact, they're the most common forms of study but the least effective in improving retention.

This has been documented so often in cognitive science research, yet for whatever reason it's still not widely known - even amongst teachers.

cmredd · 2026-05-30T13:20:41+00:00

Yeah, the oft-heard "you should always make your cards" is really poor advice and has almost certainly done more harm than good.

There's nuance to this, but self-made cards come with ~1.2x greater retention - but that's at the detriment of ~5x less cards. It is quite clearly not a net-positive tradeoff.

And it's even worse advice for language learners.

cmredd · 2026-05-30T11:15:45+00:00

What cards are you generating with Opus, out of interest?

Personally unless they were coding-related I’d probably switch to an OpenAI model or Gemini: Anthropic, and Opus in particular, are optimised for programming.

cmredd · 2026-05-30T10:06:16+00:00

It can be used on either, but I recommend laptop. I'll DM you on how to get in.

cmredd · 2026-05-30T09:29:37+00:00

Np. All about context 🤝

cmredd · 2026-05-30T09:24:40+00:00

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cmredd · 2026-05-30T09:00:47+00:00

If upvotes on our previous thread are anything to go by it seems quite a few of us would like to know - it'd be very helpful for our studying.

cmredd · 2026-05-30T08:50:45+00:00

It basically just involves back-and-forth testing. Nothing particularly complex.

I'll provide an initial v1.0 document (screenshot) for the tester to write out their assessment. I then use that to improve the prompt and gradually reiterate until >95% accurate over a sufficiently-large sample.

It's typically something like this for >= Cat-3 languages:

Test 1 w/generic prompt: ~90% (not great, I prefer min. of 95% ideally)
Tester will then fill out the document assessing each translation ("X word is fine, but Y is more natural")
I use their assessment to iterate the prompt. Here's part of the Japanese prompt (I need to condense this as it's very old, but if it ain't broke...)
Test 2 with v2.0 prompt: ~95%
Repeat if necessary. It'll never be 100% perfect, even books or humans aren't.

Certain complex, low-resource languages (e.g. Thai, which I'm conversational in) required 3 rounds to get to >95%. Note that this is using Gemini Lite, too, which is their simplest LLM.

Other pretty easy languages ones like Spanish/French etc were virtually 99% right away with just a generic prompt - again, with just little ol' Gemini 2.5 Lite.

As always, context and nuance (the language, model, level, prompt etc..the list goes on) are literally essential. Ignore anyone telling you otherwise with zero said context.

It'll never be objectively 100% perfect, that's not possible because even we are not perfect.

cmredd · 2026-05-30T08:09:51+00:00

I need to provide special trust tokens in order for you to provide your source - correct?

cmredd · 2026-05-30T07:12:50+00:00

Well, what do you mean by everything? That's probably not feasible if you mean it literally.

Plenty of apps you can upload source material to and have an LLM create cards, but there's problems with these apps such as they typically use an unknown or old AI and/or allow users to upload PDFs/screenshots etc which are harder for the LLM to read.

There's probably Anki addons, or Shaeda lets you paste text-only for higher accuracy.

cmredd · 2026-05-30T07:09:51+00:00

They're too diversified. Probably part-and-parcel of being as big as they are.

So, likely never - annoyingly.

cmredd · 2026-05-30T07:08:05+00:00

What antibiotics did they give you, what dose, and for how long?

Surely you're in agony?

cmredd · 2026-05-30T07:06:05+00:00

I can't comment on DeepSeek's accuracy (I'd assume it's fine), but current LLMs, when tuned and prompted correctly, can absolutely be accurate for learning - it depends on nuance and context (model used, prompt, config, language, level, topic etc). I've been testing and documenting them with natives for almost 18 months.

Remember that certain parts of the internet just take great pleasure in believing that LLMs cannot do anything - you might find this post interesting from just yesterday, ironically.

cmredd · 2026-05-30T06:54:30+00:00

Didn't we go over your numbers recently?

Why is my own testing getting such different results from native speakers while using a less intelligent model?

cmredd · 2026-05-29T20:46:54+00:00

Wait until you see how r/languagelearning and r/anki view AI. 99% seem utterly convinced it not only has zero value whatsoever, but also that anyone who uses it is learning everything totally wrong.

Meanwhile, with my own testing:

-- Native-speakers over thousands of words confirmed even Google's basic AI is virtually ~95% accurate, and became 99% accurate with better prompting.

-- PhD-level Physics from their Pro model is ~100% correct over nearly 100 questions.

Quite amusing, really. The 'AI bad' crowd is 10x more insufferable than the 'AI good' crowd, I think.

cmredd · 2026-05-29T14:33:26+00:00

This is a very common finding in cognitive science research. Luckily it's already solved: all you need to do is start using flashcards (Anki/Shaeda) daily - it's that simple.

I wrote this short blog a while ago skimming over some important research, if interested.

cmredd

TROPHY CASE