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Your highlights aren't flashcards

Every few months someone dumps their Kindle highlights into Anki, grinds reviews for two weeks, and quits feeling guilty. The tool wasn't wrong — it was the wrong tool. Spaced repetition and resurfacing solve different problems, and knowing the difference saves you the failed experiment.

Spaced repetition is a test

Anki, SuperMemo, and every SM-2/FSRS descendant are built around recall testing: hide the answer, force retrieval, grade yourself, and let the algorithm stretch the interval as memory strengthens. This is spectacular for things with a question-answer shape — vocabulary, anatomy, chess lines — where "did I retrieve it?" is measurable and the goal is airtight memory.

Highlights have no question side

A passage from Seneca isn't a fact you're at risk of failing to retrieve. There's nothing to hide, nothing to grade, no "correct." You marked it because it moved you or sharpened your thinking. What you want isn't guaranteed recall — it's another encounter: the right sentence surfacing on an ordinary Tuesday, landing differently because you've changed since you marked it.

Grading such an encounter is worse than pointless — the pass/fail frame turns a pleasure into a chore, which is exactly why those Anki experiments die in week two.

Resurfacing, defined

Resurfacing keeps spaced repetition's one great idea — spacing — and drops the test. A resurfacing system:

• shows each highlight with its source visible — nothing hidden
• rotates through your whole library with rest periods, so nothing repeats soon and nothing is forgotten forever
• takes preference, not grades — "more like this" / "less of this," steering the rotation instead of scoring you
• caps the daily dose — a few highlights, not a due-pile of 240 that shames you after a vacation

No streak debt, no ease factors, no guilt. The worst case for skipping a week is… nothing. The rotation just continues.

Use both, for different things

Learning Spanish? Anki, absolutely. Wanting five years of underlined sentences to keep visiting you? That's resurfacing — by daily email and a two-minute review, which is exactly the loop Rereader runs on your Mac. The books already did the hard part; the software just makes sure you meet them again.