Why your missed questions should come back to haunt you

Cramming feels productive because recall is easy right after you study. The problem is that the same recall collapses within days. For a months-long board review, that is the wrong curve to be on.

Spaced repetition fixes it by resurfacing the questions you got wrong on a widening schedule, one day, then three, then a week, so the material re-enters your working memory just as it is about to fade.

The counterintuitive part is that the struggle is the point. When an old miss comes back and you have to fight a little to recall the rule, that effort is what writes it into long-term memory. Re-reading your notes feels smoother precisely because it skips that fight, which is why it fades faster.

To run it by hand, keep a miss notebook. Every item you get wrong goes in with the rule that beat you, and you retest yourself on day one, day three, day seven, and day fourteen. Items you get right graduate to the next interval; items you miss again reset to day one. The bookkeeping is tedious, which is exactly why most reviewees abandon it by week three.

CrimForge does this automatically: every miss goes into a review queue that brings the item back until it sticks, so nothing you got wrong stays forgotten.