Encodr vs. making flashcards in Notion or a spreadsheet

Building a DIY flashcard system in Notion (a database with a gallery view) or a spreadsheet (a term column, a definition column, a random-row macro) is a common workaround for people who don't want to install another app. It works, in the sense that it technically shows you a question and an answer. Here's what it doesn't do.

No real scheduling

"Show a random row" is not spaced repetition - it has no memory of which cards you've gotten right or wrong, so it can't skip what you've mastered or surface what you're missing more often. You could build tracking columns yourself (a "last reviewed" date, a manual difficulty rating), but at that point you're hand-building a worse version of what a dedicated scheduler already does automatically. See what spaced repetition actually does for what that automation is actually buying you.

No retrieval variety

A Notion database flips between two fields. There's no natural way to get multiple-choice distractors, typed-answer grading with synonym tolerance, or true/false framing without building each of those as a separate manual structure - and most people don't. Flip cards, multiple choice, and typed answers covers why that variety isn't just polish, it changes what kind of recall you're actually training.

Maintenance tax

Every improvement to a homemade system - better scheduling, better formatting, mobile-friendly review - is something you have to build and maintain yourself, on top of actually studying. That's real time that isn't going toward the material. A purpose-built tool absorbs that maintenance cost so it's not competing with your study time.

Where the DIY approach is actually fine

If you genuinely enjoy building your own systems, or the material is niche enough that no curated content exists and volume is low enough that scheduling gaps don't matter much, a spreadsheet is a perfectly reasonable choice - not everything needs a dedicated app. It stops being fine specifically when the volume gets large enough that "did I actually review this recently" becomes a real question you can't answer by memory, which is exactly the problem a scheduler exists to solve. Studying a 1,000-card deck without burning out is a decent gut check for where that line usually sits.