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Best learning app with integrated task management for Academics?
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Posted by Lucine
Jun 3, 2025 at 12:00 PM
Nathan, thank you for sharing your unique perspective, that’s a very original way to use spaced repetition. The way you use it seems like such a great addition to daily life. Now spaced repetition has become one of my “musts” in search for the holy grail app too!
Remnote seemed great but many features are for subscribers only. The spaced repetition part is still free, of course, but it just leaves a bad aftertaste knowing that they see students as cash cows. Their
seemingly good intentions to help students study better was just an illusion, or wrong interpretation on my part since it was started by people who claimed to be recently graduated or current students. Even in western Europe, few students can afford their asked price in monthly payments, let alone anywhere else. Maybe in America, I don’t know.
It is otherwise very well-made and the integration of spaced repetition with a main notes repository would have been ideal.
nathanb wrote:
RemNote checks all these boxes. It’s built for academic learning with
>very good PDF integration.
>
>It doesn’t have a formal task manager built-in but it’s got full
>table/metadata tagging capability (like Tana) so you can design it to be
>a task/project manager.
>
>I’m not an academic, I’m an industrial project engineer. I use it
>primarily as a project manager with inline project tasks as well as a
>“long term knowledge tree” with embedded spaced repetition to
>internalize key facts and concepts.
>
>Related topic: Spaced Repetition is a mis-applied and under-appreciated
>2nd brain tool that’s changed my life.
>
>I use “spaced repetition” in place of “note reviews”. It’s why I love
>RemNote. I’m very bad at intentionally reviewing my notes with any
>consistency. I’m even worse at reviewing “opinion notes” like
>intentions, habits, mantras, priorities etc I want to internalize. SR
>has become my personal hack for this deficiency. There’s a lot less
>friction to me idly flipping through some SR cards when waiting at the
>doc office than to try and remember that my “new habit” note exists AND
>to feel like reviewing it right now. With SR I can sneak in
>micro-reviews randomly during the day with way less resistance and trick
>myself into reviewing my stuff.
>
>Imagine replacing all that time doom scrolling facebook, bluesky, reddit
>etc and scrolling through a random feed of your 2nd brain instead.
>Obviously the 2nd thing isn’t the same level of dopamine hit but it’s a
>much lower threshold habit to activate than…actually reviewing a
>specific list.
>
>I feel like it’s increased my working memory and general brain function.
> For a long time I tried to externalize as much info as possible into my
>2nd brains.
> Our meat brain is for having ideas, not remembering them, right? That
>approach turned me into an overwhelmed scatterbrain. My brain forgot
>how to remember things. This new hybrid approach has started to reverse
>that. Obviously I can’t/shouldn’t memorize my digital brain but I CAN
>memorize key points AND consistently remind myself of the scope and
>shape of my digital knowledge tree. Feels good to let my brain spread
>its wings again and flex a bit.
>
>Our meat brains are still the GOAT of making magical idea connections
>but it needs INTERNAL material for that. I had forgotten how good our
>brains actually are at internalizing a huge amount of info without a
>downside. For example I’m HORRIBLE at remembering names. I found that
>locking in some names with SR made me much better at remembering names
>in general. Does having 30 more names “locked in” reduce how much other
>stuff I can know? Oddly no, it seems to have the opposite effect. All I
>had to do was “wake up” that part of my brain again. When I’m doing
>cards on a regular basis I have less brain fog and feel much more
>engaged and effective. Spaced Repetition, applied generally, is great
>brain exercise and can make all your digital brain “evergreen”.
>
>Most people think SR is only for learning rote facts. Of course it’s
>great for learning names and state capitals. But it’s also great
>for…EVERYTHING ELSE.
>
>Keyboard shortcuts, quotes, jokes, favorite memories, bucket list, bible
>verses, etc.
>
>Another of my many shortcomings is remembering arbitrary decisions and
>sticking with them. Such as:
>
>-where does my favorite screwdriver live?
>-where do I store/index my car maintenance records?
>-what tag do I apply to “someday maybe” project ideas in Remnote?
>-when’s the best time to look at my calendar/tasks for tomorrow
>-where am I tracking my dog’s monthly flea/tick treatment and where’s
>the reminder
>
>Those administrivia things where the final choice doesn’t matter as much
>as consistently sticking with that choice. My dumb brain has a really
>hard time remembering the choice I made about it last week. The next
>time the thing comes up my dumb brain just churns through the trade-offs
>again and re-enters the same indecision loop. I drive myself crazy
>doing this.
>
>Simply adding a SR tag to “you decided to do X this way because of Y” is
>the way through. It doesn’t even take that many card reviews, which is
>the magic of spaced rep. I’ll see it often at first and I’ll remember
>my choice just fine. Eventually I’d forget but the magic of SR will
>remind me before it’s lost to the void again.
>
>The reason that SR within RemNote is superior to standalone SR apps like
>Anki/Memrise is because RemNote “cards” live within your notes. That
>way, when I see the reminder card “the dog’s records and plans are here”
>and my brain inevitably thinks “but wouldn’t x work better for this?...”
>I can simply jump right to the note tree that led to that decision and
>see that I had this same genius idea about 6 months ago and decided
>against it because of
. So instead of changing the
>card I simply write a “check in” comment to my future self making fun of
>my self for trying to get myself stuck in a loop again.
>
>It sounds silly but doing this has made me realize that what I often
>believe are new ideas are actually a small number of repeat thought
>loops that keep haunting my mental space at the expense of real
>progress. I’m finally able to break those loops now.
>
>
Posted by Franz Grieser
Jun 3, 2025 at 03:15 PM
nathanb wrote:
>I’m not an academic, I’m an industrial project engineer. I use it
>primarily as a project manager with inline project tasks as well as a
>“long term knowledge tree” with embedded spaced repetition to
>internalize key facts and concepts.
>
>Related topic: Spaced Repetition is a mis-applied and under-appreciated
>2nd brain tool that’s changed my life.
>
>I use “spaced repetition” in place of “note reviews”. It’s why I love
>RemNote. I’m very bad at intentionally reviewing my notes with any
>consistency. I’m even worse at reviewing “opinion notes” like
>intentions, habits, mantras, priorities etc I want to internalize. ...
Oh, you’re describing me.
Your usage of Spaced Repetition sounds like the solution to one of my problems. :-D
And it creates a new problem: Now, I need to look for a PKM that’s based on MD files in the file system and supports SR without relying on (clunky and crash-prone) plug-ins like Obsidian. And has an iOS app. :-(
Are there (other) PKMs that support SR out of the box? And store notes in MD files, locally?
Hm. I should not come here. CRIMP struck again.
Posted by Lucine
Jun 3, 2025 at 05:15 PM
I too am looking for a software that has integrated spaced repetition, and stores files as md locally, but is Windows/Linux instead. If anyone knows something, please let me know. I’ll update with any new finds here, including for other OSes.
Franz Grieser wrote:
nathanb wrote:
>>I’m not an academic, I’m an industrial project engineer. I use it
>>primarily as a project manager with inline project tasks as well as a
>>“long term knowledge tree” with embedded spaced repetition to
>>internalize key facts and concepts.
>>
>>Related topic: Spaced Repetition is a mis-applied and under-appreciated
>>2nd brain tool that’s changed my life.
>>
>>I use “spaced repetition” in place of “note reviews”. It’s why I love
>>RemNote. I’m very bad at intentionally reviewing my notes with any
>>consistency. I’m even worse at reviewing “opinion notes” like
>>intentions, habits, mantras, priorities etc I want to internalize. ...
>
>Oh, you’re describing me.
>
>Your usage of Spaced Repetition sounds like the solution to one of my
>problems. :-D
>
>And it creates a new problem: Now, I need to look for a PKM that’s based
>on MD files in the file system and supports SR without relying on
>(clunky and crash-prone) plug-ins like Obsidian. And has an iOS app. :-(
>
>Are there (other) PKMs that support SR out of the box? And store notes
>in MD files, locally?
>
>
>
>Hm. I should not come here. CRIMP struck again.
>
Posted by Franz Grieser
Jun 3, 2025 at 09:33 PM
Lucine wrote:
>I too am looking for a software that has integrated spaced repetition,
>and stores files as md locally, but is Windows/Linux instead. If anyone
>knows something, please let me know. I’ll update with any new finds
>here, including for other OSes.
What I found out so far:
** RemNote **
available for Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS, Android
cost: 8 Euro/month or 395 Euro for lifetime license
no local storage (at least, I failed to find an option to specify a folder on my local disk)
** Obsidian with one of the SR plug-ins **
available for Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS, Android
Obsidian is free, syncing is not.
local and cloud storage
Don’t know yet whether the SR plug-ins work on iOS/Android, too.
** Anki **
available for Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS, Android
Open Source and free
local and cloud storage
does not directly support MD but reads/writes TXT files
There are Obsidian plug-ins that export MD files to Anki (haven’t tested that)
Posted by Franz Grieser
Jun 10, 2025 at 06:27 AM
Another candidate:
** Logseq **
runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android
stores MD files locally
has a flashcard feature
Open Source
I haven’t really used Logseq but will give it a try.