Does anyone use exclusively anki for studying?

[gregoryhouse]

So I've been using anki lately exclusively for studying. I don't make notes outside of anki anymore and anki cards are my sole means to review the material. Does anyone else do this and how do you think its been working for you? If you do use anki exclusively for studying, do you guys do anything to change up your routine a couple days before the test or do you trust that anki works how its supposed to and you will remember previous cards without having to go back and review all the material again?

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[xffan624]

So I've been using anki lately exclusively for studying. I don't make notes outside of anki anymore and anki cards are my sole means to review the material. Does anyone else do this and how do you think its been working for you? If you do use anki exclusively for studying, do you guys do anything to change up your routine a couple days before the test or do you trust that anki works how its supposed to and you will remember previous cards without having to go back and review all the material again?

I use Anki for the memorizing of material. I use textbooks/youtube/lectures for the understanding of material. Usually about a week before test time, I start adding elements in addition to anki to supplement my understanding. Everybody's different, though. 1st year is about finding out what works for you.

 

[witzelsucht]

I use anki for all of my "studying." I do use pathoma and rx/uw along with classes but i dont use lists or notes or anything like that. granted this is for second year and i didnt use anki first year because the material did not lend itself as much to anki, at least not without making tons of occlusion cards. I'm fairly certain that in a few years anki will be THE way of studying in med school, us smart folk who use it now are just ahead of the curve!

 

[sinombre]

I use Anki for almost everything (I started using Anki when I started school last August). I still review cards before they are "due" before a test though. Sometimes I'll hand write notes to learn a concept for the first time, or if I have to memorize a chart or something, but I use Anki for 95% of what I study, and it works extremely well. It probably works so well because I was someone who used to fall victim to thinking I knew something when I would re-read/go through notes when I didn't actually know it (or at least not as well as I needed to), and a spaced repetition flashcard program won't really allow you to do that.

 

[grt398]

I use anki for all of my "studying." I do use pathoma and rx/uw along with classes but i dont use lists or notes or anything like that. granted this is for second year and i didnt use anki first year because the material did not lend itself as much to anki, at least not without making tons of occlusion cards. I'm fairly certain that in a few years anki will be THE way of studying in med school, us smart folk who use it now are just ahead of the curve!

This. I've been adding FA/Pathoma stuff into anki with each block as we go through it during MS2 and I think it's going to make my dedicated study period a lot easier since I don't have to review most of the pathophys for the organ systems, just lots of biochem/pharm etc since we did more of that 1st year and I didn't add it into my cards.

 

[Brahventus]

How do you guys integrate concepts into your cards well enough to replace note taking? Just need some tips since I am also only using Anki for MS2.

 

[13132]

In a sense...

I put every testable piece of information from lecture in Anki. I also make sub-decks of tables, charts, or lists that I come across in other resources. After the first pass of the material it all ends up in Anki.

I seriously don't know how people do medical school without it.

 

[13132]

How do you guys integrate concepts into your cards well enough to replace note taking? Just need some tips since I am also only using Anki for MS2.

Formulate good questions. I don't just make "What is the definition of ____" cards. If you come across something that the lecturer stresses or something tricky make sure to test yourself on the nitty gritty of that topic in as many ways possible in the form of multiple cards. Example would be phentolamine and phenoxybenzamine. Both are non-selective alpha inhibitors and I had cards just asking what they were. Then I had a card asking what is common to them and what is different (phenoxybenzamine is irreversible). Then I asked what the curves would look like and what would happen to the EC50 and efficacy of norepi with both of those drugs to get at the irreversible thing and also integrate it with kinetics. You take notes in class and you take good ones.... then that information gets put into Anki. I make sure to rephrase things how I will understand them. I also image occlude tables and figure (download the Image Occlusion add-on).

IMO Anki doesn't "replace" going to lecture, taking notes, reading an occasional text, etc. It is just a way to consolidate every piece of information you come across and make sure that you see it enough to remember it.

 

[grt398]

As a follow-up it worked out really well for Step 1 and I'm now using the same Pathoma cards I made for MS2/Step 1 to study for Step 2. Anki is genuinely one of the best tools out there and I'd highly recommend it to everyone.

 

[chronicidal]

Agreed. Anki does not replace reading and doing practice questions. It is a way to retain all the critical details.

The questions should be so clear and specific that there can be only one way to answer it correctly. Formulating good cards takes thinking and research.

 

[achamess]

It's important to distinguish between the acquisition of new information and the retention of that information. Learning entails both. New information needs to go into our heads, and be stored for later use. If you can't remember something, it's as good as not there at all.

Anki, and SR in general, is for the retention of material you have acquired through other means, namely reading, watching or listening. It's what you do to maintain your learning for the long term. Blasting a bunch of flashcards as a means of acquiring new knowledge is pretty poor, mostly because the isolated nuggets of information have little meaning or coherence when they are scattered about, and that makes it much less likely that you'll remember what you learn. As much as I like Anki, I wouldn't recommend it as a sole tool that one uses to learn anything for anything other than straight factual information (trivia, vocabulary, etc.). And even then, it's not ideal.
SR is a powerful tool, but it's not a one trick pony.

 

[swolebrah]

It's important to distinguish between the acquisition of new information and the retention of that information. Learning entails both. New information needs to go into our heads, and be stored for later use. If you can't remember something, it's as good as not there at all.

Anki, and SR in general, is for the retention of material you have acquired through other means, namely reading, watching or listening. It's what you do to maintain your learning for the long term. Blasting a bunch of flashcards as a means of acquiring new knowledge is pretty poor, mostly because the isolated nuggets of information have little meaning or coherence when they are scattered about, and that makes it much less likely that you'll remember what you learn. As much as I like Anki, I wouldn't recommend it as a sole tool that one uses to learn anything for anything other than straight factual information (trivia, vocabulary, etc.). And even then, it's not ideal.
SR is a powerful tool, but it's not a one trick pony.

I am familiar with anki since I used it a lot in undergrad, however what is SR? Thanks

Also to recap, you are saying that it's best to go to lecture and really understand the material while taking notes and then consolidating those notes into short anki notecards. This would also include tables/charts/images as well, however just isolated cards made from facts would not help because you would have no idea how each card fits into the greater scheme of things and context.

is that correct?

 

[DoctorLacrosse]

how the heck do you find time to not only read and take notes, but to THEN make anki cards for all of it? that's the real question...

 

[KingTexas]

I am familiar with anki since I used it a lot in undergrad, however what is SR? Thanks

Also to recap, you are saying that it's best to go to lecture and really understand the material while taking notes and then consolidating those notes into short anki notecards. This would also include tables/charts/images as well, however just isolated cards made from facts would not help because you would have no idea how each card fits into the greater scheme of things and context.

is that correct?

I believe he is meaning SR as spaced repetition

 

[swolebrah]

I believe he is meaning SR as spaced repetition

ah that makes sense. thanks

 

[itsogre]

how the heck do you find time to not only read and take notes, but to THEN make anki cards for all of it? that's the real question...

As I go through lecture, I outline major idea in a text document, and make Anki Cards at the same time for details and technicalia. I supplement any info in my lecture audio with Googled info. Takes me like 2-2.5hr for 1hr of lecture, cause I can get really distracted with minutiae, so I need to work on that :/

 

[PeterW]

Agreed; in Learning Medicine, we suggest the following approach:

1. Read linearly through a text one paragraph at a time. Also, examine text figures and tables in sequence.

2. After completing each paragraph or figure, stop to highlight anything that you will want to capture and extract later on. Do not highlight while reading a paragraph, as this will interrupt your flow. Wait until the end, and then go back.

3. Before moving on to the next paragraph or figure, pause briefly to reflect on what you just read. In particular, think about the content in light of your framework and the advance organizers you used in your preparation.

4. If something doesn’t make sense, either re-read the text or use a reference source to clarify an unknown.

5. Move on and repeat until done with your reading.

6. Take the highlights and annotations you made and move them into Anki.​

In this way note-taking flows naturally from the process of reading, and creating Anki cards flows naturally from the process of note-taking. This makes studying more efficient - creating the Anki cards is hardly more trouble than taking notes the normal way.

 

[Brahventus]

Agreed; in Learning Medicine, we suggest the following approach:

1. Read linearly through a text one paragraph at a time. Also, examine text figures and tables in sequence.

2. After completing each paragraph or figure, stop to highlight anything that you will want to capture and extract later on. Do not highlight while reading a paragraph, as this will interrupt your flow. Wait until the end, and then go back.

3. Before moving on to the next paragraph or figure, pause briefly to reflect on what you just read. In particular, think about the content in light of your framework and the advance organizers you used in your preparation.

4. If something doesn’t make sense, either re-read the text or use a reference source to clarify an unknown.

5. Move on and repeat until done with your reading.

6. Take the highlights and annotations you made and move them into Anki.​

In this way note-taking flows naturally from the process of reading, and creating Anki cards flows naturally from the process of note-taking. This makes studying more efficient - creating the Anki cards is hardly more trouble than taking notes the normal way.

I skimmed through your book and I thought it was quite good. However, I couldn't find anything on the approach to doing questions and reviewing before an exam. Can you comment on if anki reviewing is good enough to dive right into questions the few days before exams or should rereading be incorporated? Also, should questions be done early on during the learning process or later towards exam time?

 

[13132]

how the heck do you find time to not only read and take notes, but to THEN make anki cards for all of it? that's the real question...

Notes=anki

Make anki while reading.

 

[MedWonk]

I mostly use anki for memorization of simple discrete facts. So, I use it a lot for pharm, and used it some for micro as well.

 

[PeterW]

I skimmed through your book and I thought it was quite good. However, I couldn't find anything on the approach to doing questions and reviewing before an exam. Can you comment on if anki reviewing is good enough to dive right into questions the few days before exams or should rereading be incorporated? Also, should questions be done early on during the learning process or later towards exam time?

Thanks for the kind comments

One of the key facts about learning that we get into in our Brain Science section is that people tend to forget very quickly after learning, unless they review the material several times. This WIRED article gives some more detail on this forgetting curve, but the main takeaway is that cramming and learning for the long haul are two different things.

You can cram for an exam, and that'll boost your scores on that test. But unless you follow up with review, you'll forget it very quickly. (Quick: how much orgo can you still recall?)

So it all depends on your goals. If your school's preclinical classes are graded and you want to ace those exams, you should cram for those exams and Anki isn't particularly useful for you. (I will say that you're better off using active self-explanation rather than passive reviewing - check out our Learning Sequence section for details on active learning.) If you want to retain stuff for the long haul, such as for Step 1, you'll want to start Ankiing early and often so you build up those memories for the long haul.

In practice, many students end up doing a combination of both. Use First Aid to check which facts that you're currently learning are important to remember for Step 1. Then take some of the silly minutiae that your lecturers really like talking about (yeah, everyone has one of *those* lecturers) and put those on the "cram and forget" list.

Hope this helps!