How to do Zanki Better?

[deweystrontium]

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Hey all. I'm an M1 interested in maturing OG Zanki before dedicated. Currently, I've matured roughly 10% of the deck (corresponding with class units and B&B/pathoma videos I've covered). We haven't fully moved into an organ systems based curriculum yet, so I'm trying to establish disciplined Anki habits. However, I find myself only doing 20 new cards a day and capping my reviews at 200. Sometimes I manually add more than 20 cards when I've finished an entire section of B&B. Nevertheless, even with this schedule, I find myself doing Anki for roughly 2 hours everyday. I read how many people are doing 400+ reviews a day and I'm wondering how people manage to do that. I find myself getting distracted after the first hour.

What techniques and tips do you guys have for doing longer Anki sessions? Also, do I even need to do longer sessions? Is 200 reviews with 20 new cards a day enough to mature Zanki before dedicated?

Thanks!

EDIT: I know that 20*365*2 is roughly 14k cards, but I also assume I'll sporadically add more new cards when finishing a big system. But is 200 reviews a day enough?

 

[wanderingorion]

As someone who did not mature all of Zanki (70ish%) and did well on STEP1, I think you should find an amount that you can do consistently and keep doing well on your exams. I think a good goal is to have seen all of the cards by dedicated, so you have been exposed to the information. Dedicated/Practice Questions will hammer the info in along with Anki

 

[ExplodingUlcers]

I was in this exact same boat for the first "foundations" block and it was a very messy ordeal correlating cards to lecture material but make no mistake, there almost certainly exists a card for everything in your lectures with very few exceptions.

20 new cards a day isn't that bad as an M1. If I average it out, that's probably how much I did too. In my case, depending on how dense a certain week was I did anywhere from 150-200 new cards a day but then other days I didn't suspend any just because I'd rather front load all the material in one go then have them come up as reviews. Those nights were hell and yes I ended up with well over 300-400 reviews but overall I think it worked out for the best.

If you are planning to mature Zanki then make sure you put in the time. There's honestly no way around it and there's no point to capping your reviews. Just make sure to hammer in those nitty gritty details from your lectures that may not be covered which like I said was very rare in my case.

Alternatively, you could simply focus on lectures this year to build a strong foundation then use Zanki for things that are more memorization heavy like bugs, drugs and path during your second year. The important thing is to NEVER cap your reviews because the whole point of Anki is spaced repetition.


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[ThrowawayShmoaway]

Fellow M1 here, so obviously I can't give any advice about actually maturing Zanki yet, but one thing you should probably stop doing is capping your reviews. You're defeating the purpose of the algorithm by doing so. Also, there's no reason you have to do all your reviews in one sitting. I also find my mind wandering after an extended chunk of reviews, so just take mini breaks along to way. It helps if you start your reviews early in the day, that way it gives you wiggle room for spreading it throughout the day if you need to.