What I do to use Anki more effectively

After using Anki for 5 months use a little and 3 months aggressively. I do many things to improve my usage of Anki more effectively, let’s go into detail.

What I learned in 3 months using Anki

• Don’t blame your memory. Be kind of yourself when you answer the question wrong. I don’t need to answer correctly like the original answer to show I am “Good” at the card. Maybe at the first time, I just remember 20%, then later I remember 30% then 70%, or use another word to answer the question. It’s ok to feel dumb the first time but It’s a good period for your brain to absorb, arrange and retrieve new knowledge. Don’t blame your memory. Just focus on the process. And after I stop to blamed myself and just walk the process, I found that I remember more and in a longer time than ever before. When you go running, you don’t need to run 10km the first time, just set a small goal that can trigger your eagerness, then take action, and adjust the goal based on your real accomplishment. And finally, don’t blame, don’t excuse, don’t overhope about your result.
• Play music that I love when learning new cards (new things). I know learning anything new for the first time takes time and energy, it’s so boring if you don’t have anything interesting to go with you. So I can listen to my favorite music which will give me more motivation to complete this process, and it’s getting your right brain isn’t boring. However, I think instrumental music is a must to keep me away from the lyric distraction.
• The first time review the card, try to highlight keywords or main points or make your abstractions about the knowledge. The main point is the phrase or word which gives me the main content of other information. Then at 2nd or later reviewing time, answer with those little main points first then go to detail of each main point if I want. So just don’t forget the main point, highlight it while you’re reviewing. Another tip is that I use multiple colors for the specific type of the main point. For example, the green color is for highlighting definition, the blue color is for highlighting action, and the red is for unknown terms.
• Motivate me whenever I answer a card incorrectly or missing. that’s the way I trial and succeed later. someone says many mistakes in practice, little mistakes in real-world action.
• If I feel confident about the sufficient answering the card, then set the expected time, then try to decrease the time I answer the card as much as possible but still keep answering correctly and sufficiently. When the number of information is increasing, you must use more abstraction to think faster, try to use your abstraction, and trigger your creative mind, no one charge you about your imagination, it will stick to the brain faster.
• I don’t make the card contains too much information, or too much detail, find the right level to stop adding detail. Because I will feel tired of just reviewing one big card and waste a lot of effort preparing the card, too. Just split those cards into smaller cards or use your brain to derive more detail or go deeper while reviewing the card if you like. Learn hotkey to do it quickly. As my rule of thumb, 3 to 10 lines are the right length for each card.
• Split the number of the due card into a smaller set to learn based on your energy level at the moment. Don’t just roam many cards while I feel tired after doing a 10-hour workday. Estimating the difficulty level of those cards by the number of words I added (it’s don’t exactly right, but can work to reduce your bias), then add a little buffer time for your mind to wander about what new information link to your previous information, for your mind asking many questions about the new knowledge. Don’t just learn by answering exactly like what cards give you.
• Circle unknown things and try to understand, take action about your new term before adding to Anki, fill your knowledge gap immediately right the time I feel curious, then add a new card about it. don’t wait to learn about it later.
• Remember the purpose (or goals) which why motivates me to learn and define the stop point I want. Add a group of cards about your purpose/goal of you to learn this information into the same deck, and review your purpose every day. Then review it to make sure I remember it first. There are a lot of things to learn, if I don’t keep reminding myself about my purpose and goal, I will lost inside the knowledge forest and can’t accomplish my goal.
• Don’t go back many times, just make sure I focused on Anki only to learn much. take notice if I still relearn some cards. adjust your way of learning: maybe eliminate distractions, stop mind wandering, or break those cards into smaller cards. I can change a basic card to Cloze Cards to split the current card into a smaller card to give me more context, and I can answer it easier.
• Don’t just pass the card if I waste too long answering it. It’s a habit, don’t pass the card if you just can’t answer it, it will break your SRS schedules and keep your knowledge to a longer time to retrieve, so it will take your knowledge harder to remember. Spot the time you don’t feel like doing Anki and then take a deep breath, relax for 10 minutes, then come back and make a summary note about it, or add some information about why your feel about these cards in a separate section.
• Make a story link, and create a keyword that gives me the answer to the card. Then highlight it. then try to derive only that keyword and link the card question to a keyword. stories are easy to remember than just plain text. link your current card to your history knowledge.
• Set time for learning using Anki, just 25 minutes. then relax, and do again. because 25 minutes is a good amount of time for reading or learning. In review, I can do 50 minutes, it also depends on your speed. Listen to yourself to set a comfortable time.
• Increase your keyword knowledge, highlight it, review it first, make it perfectly correct, and don’t answer the card on your way, on your keyword. The keyword is popular and so important if I want to explain it clearly to others. Use Feynman Technique to explain difficult keywords.
• Use the additional plugin:
  • No Distraction Full Screen: This plugin helps me to trigger full-screen mode for not to be distracted by a different window and notifications.
  • Text Color highlighter: highlight keywords with attractive color fit with your pen’s color while I write in my paper notes. I feel it’s made me much more effective to review compared to reviewing the only black text.
  • Statistics: This plugin gives me many metrics to adjust my performance. Or find a weak spot of knowledge to give more time to strengthen those.
• Practice, practice, practice what you learn and take notes about your journey. Then optimize your journey based on your experience. Keep adding real experience, and real journeys while applying your knowledge. Make your card live in your life. I think it makes my knowledge up-to-date with my experience and gives me an action context to keep me sharper while applying that knowledge.
• And finally, Review Anki every day. Brain is like a muscle, if you still practice it, it will grow and be sharper, remember even more. So, Take 25 minutes every day to practice your memory with Anki. Adding Review Heatmap Plugin to show your number of daily review cards in the Anki dashboard
• Let’s Anki everyday! Here is my streak:

Hope this blog will give some little ideas to use Anki. Thanks for reading!

• 2022 9