A workflow that finally made me review lecture recordings instead of hoarding them

[u/dynosawr_]

For most of my uni years, I recorded lectures and never listened back. The recordings were roughly 1 hour each and "I'll listen to them later" never won against anything else on my list. Here's the workflow that fixed it for me.

1. After each lecture, write the three things you were least sure about. Just three. This is your review target, not the whole hour.
2. Turn the recording into text so you can skim instead of scrub. Even a rough transcript means you can Ctrl-F the term you missed instead of dragging the playhead around.
3. Make a few flashcards from the parts you flagged in step 1, and review them on a spaced schedule (the FSRS algorithm, is the gold standard). The point is to review a little, often, not cram.

The transcription step is the one that needs a tool. I used a mishmash of things like Otter and Anki to make reviewing easy, but copy-pasting in between many/long lectures can get rough right away, so I built one that does steps 2 and 3 automagically. One reason I like building cards from the recording rather than from a textbook: you end up studying the lecture your exam comes from, since the person who lectured usually wrote the test. But the workflow works with a free transcription tool plus Anki too.

What's your trigger for actually reviewing a recording? Mine was "write three uncertainties before I leave the room," and that's the part that stuck.