Am I doing Anki wrong?!

[CuriousMDStudent]

I had 890 cards due today. A lot of these are cards I'm going through a second or third pass on as I am studying for my pulmonology course. I spent 8-10 hours today just going through all of these ****ing cards.

At the end, Anki has me recorded doing 1600 cards in ~4 hours (8.37 sec/cards).

I google online that people do 400-500 cards per hour. What the ****?! That means I'm taking 5x the amount of time that I'm supposed to take?! Help

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Ole_Toe]

8.4 seconds per card is actually pretty good especially for a day with 1600 cards. That’s definitely a heavy day, but yeah anki is soul crushing and you’re discovering why!

Why did your 900 cards turn into 1600? How many of those were review vs new? I have a not so great memory, and often end up doing 1.3-1.5x the number of cards due. For example, if I had 900 cards due, I would prob end up doing 1200-1350 cards from hitting “again.” Your 1.7x does seem high if it’s all review cards

 

[Ms. Incognito]

^Following. Would like to know more about this too. I always wonder how people are able to get through that many cards in a day. Is it one's approach to the cards? The settings?

 

[CuriousMDStudent]

8.4 seconds per card is actually pretty good especially for a day with 1600 cards. That’s definitely a heavy day, but yeah anki is soul crushing and you’re discovering why!

Why did your 900 cards turn into 1600? How many of those were review vs new? I have a not so great memory, and often end up doing 1.3-1.5x the number of cards due. For example, if I had 900 cards due, I would prob end up doing 1200-1350 cards from hitting “again.” Your 1.7x does seem high if it’s all review cards

A lot of them were my 2nd pass at cards and I guess I forgot. I think I just have to stick to it and pay attention while looking at cards and such. I think I need to stick to it and aim for 1.3x or 1.5x the number of cards I do. I won't lie I procastinated a bit which may have caused me to have to redo cards over and over.

 

[Bonne Nuit]

I had 890 cards due today. A lot of these are cards I'm going through a second or third pass on as I am studying for my pulmonology course. I spent 8-10 hours today just going through all of these ****ing cards.

At the end, Anki has me recorded doing 1600 cards in ~4 hours (8.37 sec/cards).

I google online that people do 400-500 cards per hour. What the ****?! That means I'm taking 5x the amount of time that I'm supposed to take?! Help

A lot of them were my 2nd pass at cards and I guess I forgot. I think I just have to stick to it and pay attention while looking at cards and such. I think I need to stick to it and aim for 1.3x or 1.5x the number of cards I do. I won't lie I procastinated a bit which may have caused me to have to redo cards over and over.

8.4 sec/card is faster than I do it, and I’m an M2 that’s been at this for a year. A good day for me is 10 sec/card. I probably spend about 4 hours a day smashing the spacebar, but I do fewer overall cards than you (usually around 800-1K/day).

I have found that I need to think and process the cards a little more slowly than others. My trade off for doing the cards a bit more deliberately is increased retention and fewer failed reviews. When I tried to go faster, I found I was often remembering the exact answer but not its meaning or context. That changed once I forced myself to briefly reason through answers before moving on.

 

[Ole_Toe]

A lot of them were my 2nd pass at cards and I guess I forgot. I think I just have to stick to it and pay attention while looking at cards and such. I think I need to stick to it and aim for 1.3x or 1.5x the number of cards I do. I won't lie I procastinated a bit which may have caused me to have to redo cards over and over.

Yeah your time looks solid to me. Everyone is different like the other person said, so you prob just have to find your own efficiencies. The speed focus add on helped me a lot but it’s not for everyone. Being honest with your reviews will help you long term but it’s def pain right now. You’re not alone! This is why so few people can really stick with Anki. Keep crushing it

 

[KirksvilleKrunk]

A lot of times if you can remember the sketch you should just hit good without reading the card too much. Even if you recognize visual cues from the card and know the answer subconsiously, usually its better to just hit good and keep moving. Questions on exams will give you context clues and that will help recall anyways.

If it's some path concept I don't really understand entirely, then I'll read the entire card. in M1 I was at ~100-200/hr and now M2 I can get to 300-400 and still keep retention up.

 

[Styrene]

After however many years, I've come to the conclusion that Anki can be counterproductive in medical education. It is useful in certain situations, such as studying for step 1 and for longitudinal review of important facts (how important those facts really are is another debate). The main focus ought to be on developing conceptual understanding and elaborated knowledge, and that process can be coupled with Anki through making the cards if done correctly. But it can also go very wrong by consuming a tremendous amount of time.

Yes, there are people who score high on step 1 solely with Zanki. But that's just step 1. I used Anki for step 1, but I made my own cards from UWorld (did not use any other source). All the same, it did nothing to make me a better physician in the real world.

In undergrad, however, it was a definite hack in memorization-heavy biology courses because all tested information could be reasonably memorized in a short time without eroding the soul. Got 130s on some tests because of insane curves with everyone else scoring in the 40s-50s. Good times.

 

[Styrene]

I don't know if you're using premade decks, but another point: To maximize the utility of Anki in medical school, it ought to be focused. For example, using it to memorize antibiotics and bacteria for a microbiology test. It can also be used as a novel spaced repetition note review platform--take notes in Anki and then review per the algorithm but never with the goal of memorizing a million discrete facts, more as concept review. The latter is my favorite use.

Setting limits on cards/day or number of cards made is also a good idea. Anki absolutely cannot be used to memorize everything in medical school (effectively impossible) and was not even designed for that. Attempting to do so is a poor use of time and will result in frustration (as I, many others, and perhaps OP have realized). In the end, I stopped using Anki and just started learning (for tests) by doing huge amounts of practice questions and reading NCBI articles and random blog posts. Time spent plummeted, and grades either remained the same or increased.

This is just my experience after spending years using Anki all through undergrad and, judiciously, during medical school. I know some may disagree.

 

[TragicalDrFaust]

Did my best with Anki for the entirety of OMS-1. Got to the point where I was doing 1,400 cards a day and spending 6 hours on review alone. Then spent 2 hours per lecture hour making my own cards (bad move). My cards were bad so I had to keep repeating them, making the reviews time pile up. In the rush to finish reviews and make new cards in under 9 hours per day, I started to lose the forest in the trees. I backed myself into a corner with anki and felt I didn't have time to learn the concepts. Obviously that failed but I was too scared to give up on anki because I didn't trust I could learn 15 hours of lecture per week by just looking over it 3 times. Turns out, I can. When I have the context of other relevant lecture material surrounding whatever I need to learn, I can learn more efficiently than within the relative void of anki.

I stopped using anki second year and my test average increased from high D's to mostly A's. Anki works for some people. Not everyone. If things don't get better for you after a few exams, don't force it. There are plenty of other effective active learning strategies. As an OMS-2 I only use anki for histology.

 

[Styrene]

Excellent post. Many have this experience. Then there are people who endlessly praise Anki as if it is everything, but there is often little to back it up. I wonder how those medical students preaching Anki actually use it. It would be interesting to compare.

 

[Lawpy]

Anki works for some people. Not everyone. If things don't get better for you after a few exams, don't force it. There are plenty of other effective active learning strategies.

100% agreed. The SDN and Reddit hiveminds like to force everyone to use Anki as if it's the best study strategy ever without realizing that study strategies are so individual specific and Anki may not work for some people

 

[Cornfed101]

I tried to stay up on all my reviews, but neuro during first year ruined that for me. I am just a lot happier when I can take the weekend off after a Friday exam. I suspend all my cards after each exam and I’m scoring about the same and I’m a lot less stressed. Just not worth it with step 1 being p/f. I don’t need to kill myself and get super burnt out.

 

[Bonne Nuit]

I tried to stay up on all my reviews, but neuro during first year ruined that for me. I am just a lot happier when I can take the weekend off after a Friday exam. I suspend all my cards after each exam and I’m scoring about the same and I’m a lot less stressed. Just not worth it with step 1 being p/f. I don’t need to kill myself and get super burnt out.

This is the way. Can I have a sip of whatever zen you're drinking?

If you are getting burned out on Anki, it is absolutely 100% OK to strictly limit your reviews. If you get behind, you don't need to do 2K cards in a day. It's also OK to use Anki, just as @Cornfed101 does, get you through a test or block and ditch the cards after. You don't have to be boxed in by how the program is "supposed" to work. Anki sacrilege, I know.

Sometimes people act like if you deviate even slightly from "the algorithm" that you will promptly forget everything you've ever covered, fail S1, and be relegated to a residency in the outer wastelands. That's not how it works. Any use of the program is going to benefit you. Sure, the spaced repetition algorithm has evidence that it optimizes long term retention, but everyone gets crazy myopic about this fact. It's a perfect example of letting perfection be the enemy of progress.

I like the program and I do recommend that all med students at least give it a shot, simply because the AnKing deck is so well suited to NBME exams (and it's a semi-legal way to get your hands on a lot of First Aid without shelling out 50 bucks). But if you try it out, hate it, and you'd rather play with colored pens and draw subway maps of concepts, just do your thing.

 

[FutureSurgical]

FWIW, I do an average of 275 cards/day. And I’m in the 2nd quartile in my class. Not a major genius or anything like that. I make cards for major concepts and use AnKing for facts I have to memorize. After 400 or so cards in a day, Anki starts working against me.

You don’t NEED to do a card for every little fact presented to you. You can make a card for a concept, like “explain how aldosterone affects the aldosterone-sensitive DT cells, principle cells, and a-intercalated cells?” That can prevent you from unsuspending up to 40 cards in AnKing. It takes a little longer when you spend more time on cards like that. But in all, you will have more time in the day to tackle new material.

 

[aldol16]

Hmm, you should reconsider how many new cards you're adding a day. Having, say, 100 new cards per day doesn't seem like much up front but it all adds up over time due to reviews and all. I wouldn't recommend more than 60-80 new cards a day for quality. I think it used to take me 2 hours to do 400-500 and that was a drag.