Know personally in real life? No. But there are plenty of examples of people using Anki/SRS tools for interesting things outside of school or 2nd language. I’m firmly in the camp that SRS is widely underrated and underused for working adults.

Some examples would be Michael Nielsen, Gwern Branwen, Andy Matuschak and u/SigmaX (reddit - not sure his real name)

* http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html * https://gwern.net/spaced-repetition * https://andymatuschak.org/prompts/ * https://imgur.com/a/anki-examples-math-engineering-eACA7QM * https://imgur.com/a/anki-practice-cards-language-music-mathe...

They'll always be "underrated" and underused because they're so damn unenjoyable.

Sure, we all need to study and learn things in life here or there, but the flashcardification of the process makes it boring and painful.

From my own personal experience trying it, I find the process to be too far removed from the practice of accomplishing what you are setting out to learn to do. An analogy might be like memorizing a recipe by using Anki cards and not physically cooking it versus doing cooking it a bunch of times without deliberately trying to memorize the recipe. For me, the latter is far more effective because you have your 6 senses of mnemonics to memorize what you are doing. I may not remember that I need 2 cups of flour, but I remember that I scooped my purple flour scoop twice and that the white contents felt powdery like flour and grainy like sugar. Even if I forgot the recipe my body would have smelled, seen, touched, weighed the material and I have all these physical clues to work with.

Learning by doing, experiencing, immersing is more of a "repetition that you don't even know you're doing" while Anki/SRS has the feeling of a chore and an obligation.