how to use anki effectively

A question and answer pair is called a card. There are two main types of cards that you want to be familiar with. Basic and Cloze. We will go through what these both mean.

Let's say you are studying a card. You get the question "How tall is the tree?" you don't know the answer. After thinking about it, and deciding you still don't know the answer, you can click the "show" button (see later in the article for pictures). Look at the example of a basic card below to understand the concept in more detail.

If you want to add cards then click on the "Add" button at the top. You will get a page that looks something like this.

It looks like a lot but you only need to focus on the main writing sections. Everything else is extra.

Making Anki Cards: Basic

Basic cards are your standard, everyday flashcards. They have a front and a back.

Front of card: How tall is the tree?

Back of card: 248m

Making Anki Cards: Cloze

Cloze cards are "fill in the blank" cards. You can have one or more blanks in a sentence. An example is given below.

An example of how cloze cards look:

Front of card: The tree is […] and tall

Back of card: The tree is nice and tall

Note: There is no real "front" or "back" in cloze cards. It is just a fill in the blank where the answer gets revealed.

Anki makes creating clozes easy. To create this special type of card, select "Cloze" in the top left of the "add" page. See the red arrow below.

Type some text and then highlight over the text you want to blank out and click the […] button or press "command shift c" (for mac).

This is the show button:

It is what you click to reveal the back of a card.

Once you have revealed the answer you can move onto the next card.

However, before you do this you need to decide how well you did on the current card (how easy was it to remember the answer on the back of the card). You will get an option as shown below.

You can tell Anki how well you remembered, and Anki will choose the next time to show you again. As you can see from above, if you hit "good" then you will see the card in less than 10 mins.

How to Memorise Lists

How do I memorise long, boring lists?

Cloze overlapper add-on!

It is a great tool, but unfortunately, you do have to pay for it.

However, it is definitely worth it.

Just pay for one month and you will have access to all of the add ons.

See Mnemonic, Acronyms and Words for more details on how I use Cloze Overlapper to memorise lists.

Being Strict about Pressing "Again" and "Good"

This is a tricky one.

Although being strict is good in an absolute sense, it can increase your card load over time.

What do I mean by this?

I mean that if you press "again" too often, you will start to see cards way too often (due to "ease hell").

This will not only be incredibly time-consuming in the long term, but it can be demotivating to the point where you stop doing Anki all together.

To avoid this, you can:

Learn the card properly in the first place
Be generous about pressing "good" – if you get one small detail wrong, there's no need to press "again"

Do Loads of Practice Questions

Questions – you have to do past paper questions with Anki.

Anki on its own will not get you everything you dream of.

Instead what I do is be consistent with Anki throughout the year, and then, when it comes to exam time, I ensure to do plenty of practice questions in the form of online question banks like Passmedicine.

Attack a Topic From Many Angles

Using multiple cards for one topic.

This is a good tip for anyone who finds it difficult to connect dots. Have multiple flashcards which relate to one topic but are worded in different ways and come at it in different angles.

For example, let's say you are trying to memorise the treatment options for asthma. These are the sort of flashcards you would want to make in Anki to ensure you cover all the basics.

Front: What is the first-line treatment of Asthma?
Back: Salbutamol Inhaler
Front: An inhaler is typically used as a treatment for what?
Back: Asthma
Front: Salbutamol inhalers are typically what dosage for adults?
Back: 4mg
Front: The drug used to treat asthma is of what class?
Back: Beta agonist
Front: What is the drug class of Salbutamol?
Back: Beta agonist
Front: Name three drugs that are Beta-agonists (A, M, S)
Back: Albuterol, Metaproterenol, Salbutamol

The big downside of this is that you run the risk of not being able to cover all the topics you want as you create too many cards.

Therefore I suggest only to be in-depth like the example above when the topic is particularly important for you to know.

Mnemonic, Acronyms and Words

Making up acronyms and words really helps.

For example, these are some cards that I have used the cloze overlapper + an acronym to memorise:

I have used the acronym "CLOT" to memorise what Antiphospholipid syndrome causes.

You then have the option to reveal the rest of the flashcards (they do not appear via default).

Revealing them can help you connect the dots between the different answers. This is shown in the image below.

Cloze overlapper card example (after selecting "reveal all")

I also use my own made-up mnemonics as can be seen in the example given below.

The adverse effects of isotretinoin can be remembered with "The Dragon Lord Really Hates Noisy Insufferable Peasants"

If you are a bit confused as to what I mean, let me explain.

The beginning of each word corresponds to the first letter of each word. Therefore I use the mnemonic to help me remember the first letter of the list, making the entire list easier to memorise.

TheDragonLordReallyHatesNoisyInsufferablePeasants corresponds to:

Teratogenicity
Dry skin
Low mood
Raised triglycerides
Hair thinning
Nose bleeds
Intracranial hypertension
Photosensitivity

Merge Your Decks

Rather than having many different decks, you should merge all of your decks into one overarching deck.

This is because it increases the effort that your brain has to do (by using a scientifically proven method of interleaving)

Why does interleaving work?

In Yana Weinstein's paper, he states that interleaving works because it "allows students to acquire the ability to choose the right method for solving different types of problems rather than learning only the method itself".

That essentially means that you are learning the topic rather than brute memorising.