Janki Method Applying

As the number of things I want to learn is growing more every day, I always have a question in my mind about how to learn faster (learning here by my definition includes understanding and applying and keeping it stick in my brain longer), According to Bloom’s pyramid, there are 7 levels of learning. I’m always looking for ways to speed up the first 6 levels of learning anything because these 6 steps are the base for doing effectively level 7 (Creative). I learned about how to take effective notes with Obsidian, then review knowledge with Anki - A Spaced Repetition System (SRS) application used to review learned knowledge systematically and in the most optimal time. Next was figuring out how to apply these to learning to code, and that’s when I found an approach the author calls the “Janki Method”. And this topic will talk about how I apply the Janki Method and have more changes and expansions to suit my learning style.

What is Janki Method?

You can check for more detail about this method in this link Janki Method — Using SRS to Improve Programming | Jack Kinsella. For easy to know all the rules I applied to my process, I will list general rules from the page of the author of the Janki Method:

1. The first rule of Janki boosts your memory:
   “Every time you learn something new create a question and answer flashcard and add this card to Anki.”
2. The second rule of Janki encourages a commitment to daily learning:
   “You must use Anki every single day - including weekends and holidays - and commit to doing so indefinitely.”
3. The third rule of Janki keeps you focused on what is important at the moment:
   “Learn in context. Pick a project, and learn only what you need to get it done.”
4. The fourth rule of Janki grounds knowledge in reality:
   “Only add a card to your deck after having tried to use the item of knowledge therein.”
5. The fifth rule of Janki method minimizes mistake repetition.
   “Every time you make a mistake carry out a post-mortem and try to figure out the lessons in the experience. Think about what you would need to know to prevent that mistake from occurring again, and turn this insight into new flashcards.”
6. The sixth rule of Janki method encourages regular critical reflection:
   “At the end of every project ask yourself what lessons you learned and what you would do differently if you were to repeat the project with the benefit of hindsight.”
7. The seventh rule of Janki keeps your decks in shape.
   “Delete or modify any incorrect, outdated, difficult to remember, incomplete or unnecessary cards. Update existing cards as improved understanding dawns.”
8. The eighth rule of Janki encourages you to use your readings of other people’s code as a source of learning:
   “Read code regularly. If you come across something interesting – be that an algorithm, a hack, or an architectural decision - create a card detailing the technique and showing the code.”
   • Source: Janki Method Source

How do I apply Janki Method to my learning routine?

To easy to know which rule I apply, I use simple words like “Rule 1” (“1” is the order of the rules based on the list I mentioned in section #What is Janki Method?). Now to apply this method to my learning routine, I add all the above rules to my Anki deck to learn.

• To Apply Rule 1, I create many cards a day about whatever I learn such as Hibernate, Spring Boot, then Programming Paradigm, Code Convention … then I add those content into My Obsidian Note, Make Anki Card for it in Obsidian. Then I used the Obsidian_To_Anki Plugin to transfer Obsidian notes to Anki App. Done! Now, My Anki App has all of my up-to-date knowledge, ready to review every day.
• Now I can apply Rule 2, And I write my repeated task as “Review Anki” to my daily planner To notify me every day to review my Anki App. Then I commit to it every day. And fortunately, I make 29 days commitment completed, the result stats show in the below pictures:
• Rule 3, Rule 4 are the rules that I added to the mindset rule which I will ask myself frequently: “is this thing is the really good thing I want to learn and how to execute it faster with half of current expected time ?” in everything I learn. These habits keep me effective the most in executing anything.
• Every mistake is harmful and expensive and it may affect many other things in the software, even other systems. So any effort to remember and “don’t step into the same wreckage” is important, especially in a Software Engineer career, there are a lot of technical rules to accustomed to. So Rule 5, and Rule 6 are necessary, I add all my project mistakes, task mistakes, and critical rules. Moreover, I add week’s mistakes, and month’s mistakes to my week/month planner to Anki, too.
• While I review my cards every day, I apply Rule 7 to delete or update cards asking. And I also find another way to explain the answer, then append these to the card answer. This way makes my understanding of the card deeper.
• The Rule 8 is very important for me because I don’t have excellent memory naturally to remember 1 time immediately over many years. However, there are a lot of things to learn such as frameworks, function syntaxes, architectures, methodologies, software mechanisms… So the question is how to add this piece of knowledge as fast as possible to my Anki with the simplest action? I came up with the idea to create a shortcut key in Ubuntu to add clipboard text To My Obsidian Note to keep in my note, Then Obsidian Note automatically syncs cards to my Anki App. So, the only thing I need to do is press one shortcut key to trigger the Taking Note and Adding Card Flow.

After 1 month applied this method, I feel more confident about what I’ve learned, I retained more knowledge over a long time (many months). Moreover, I can explain my knowledge more fluently and clearly. Besides that, I can strategically keep my learning statistics by Anki Statistic Features.

My future goals

So as the time pass, there are a lot of cards will be added, these are my future goals to maintain learning habits with Anki:

• I make strategies to balance the time every day to review Anki cards. Just 30-60 minutes every morning even if I add more than several hundred cards a day. Then make a strategy to schedule 2 or 3 reviewing sections in a day - maybe in the morning, afternoon, and evening.
• Find a model to automatically cluster by difficulty levels such as “easy, medium, hard” cards into a specific deck which configured for a longer revising time or to be reviewed more frequently.

That’s all, thank the author of Janki Method once again for the excellent blog supporting me many more in learning.

Thank for reading, Hope you doing well!

References

• Janki Method

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