The highlight graveyard
Highlighting feels like progress because it takes effort and produces something you can point to. But a highlight is a record, not a memory. A sentence sitting in an export file, or in a book on a shelf, does nothing for you unless something brings you back to it. Most reading tools are excellent at holding on to what you capture and silent about the second half of remembering.
The research behind this is old and consistent. We forget quickly after learning something, then more slowly, and the way to flatten that decline is to retrieve the information at well-chosen moments. The forgetting curve explains the shape of it, and how to actually remember what you read applies it to books and articles.
Why retyping highlights fails
The usual advice is to turn highlights into flashcards. In practice that means copying each passage into another app, inventing a question for it, and guessing what the answer should be without the surrounding page. Most people do five cards and stop. Even when they push on, the card is worse than the source: the paragraph, the argument and the chapter around the sentence are gone.
Review from the real source
In Cirello a card does not have to be typed text on both sides. It can prompt from a reusable resource, such as a book, a copybook or a website, plus a per-card instruction like "page 118" or "the paragraph about compound interest". You add the book once. After that, capturing a passage means pointing at it rather than retyping it.
When that card comes up, you are sent back to the real page and the real context. Images work the same way: a photographed page or a diagram can sit on either side of a card, and opens in a lightbox when you review.
How to turn book highlights into spaced-repetition cards walks through the workflow in more detail.
Scheduled by a model, not a hope
Each card is timed by FSRS-6, which estimates how likely you are to remember it and brings it back before it slips. Passages you hold well move out to longer gaps, and the ones that keep escaping come around sooner. Nothing depends on you remembering to go looking. You can read about the scheduler on the FSRS app page.
A workable routine
Keep the bar for capture low: is this worth coming back to? That is the only filter. Then keep the habit small:
- Add the book or article as a resource once.
- As you read, capture the passages that stopped you, with a page or section reference.
- Open Cirello for a few minutes a day and work through what is due.
- If you already keep lists of terms or quotes, paste them in bulk instead of re-entering them.
Where this does and does not help
Source-linked cards are best for ideas, arguments and passages you want to be able to recall and place. For facts and vocabulary, short front and back cards are usually better, and how to write good flashcards shows how to keep them small. Cirello does not generate cards from your highlights automatically, and it does not yet support cloze deletion. You choose what goes in.
For the broader picture, see the spaced repetition flashcard app overview.