USMLE Keeping up with anki decks

[ski89]

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So I have been using anki nearly exclusively for all my blocks and it has worked well for me. My strategy is to keep up with my old decks from each of my previous blocks all the way through year 2 in order to keep material as fresh and ingrained as possible. The daily reviews takes me about 30min. Anyway, I'm just curious if anyone has tried this themselves and could comment in how well it served them when it came time for step 1. Thanks!

 

[malin]

my opinion; it's worth to keep up with certain anki decks if what you're reviewing is HY for boards. i used brosencephalon's anki deck throughout year 2, and since his deck is primarily FA and Pathoma, i was keeping HY info for boards fresh. if your anki decks are what you learned in class lectures, then i might be a bit more hesitant to keep up with those since they can add a lot of trivial/extraneous details.

i was doing what you were doing, but i would find it difficult to keep up with the decks for previous blocks when i was studying for an upcoming test. the cards would add up over the course of a week, and then all of a sudden i would have too many cards to do.

some decks i kept up with for 2-3 months, others just 1 month. at the end of the day i still did really well. all i can say is to keep up with them for as long as possible--within your comfort zone. if it's only taking 30 mins/day,that's probably fine. If it starts to add up, maybe you can cut out decks that you've already been reviewing for months.

 

[ski89]

my opinion; it's worth to keep up with certain anki decks if what you're reviewing is HY for boards. i used brosencephalon's anki deck throughout year 2, and since his deck is primarily FA and Pathoma, i was keeping HY info for boards fresh. if your anki decks are what you learned in class lectures, then i might be a bit more hesitant to keep up with those since they can add a lot of trivial/extraneous details.

i was doing what you were doing, but i would find it difficult to keep up with the decks for previous blocks when i was studying for an upcoming test. the cards would add up over the course of a week, and then all of a sudden i would have too many cards to do.

some decks i kept up with for 2-3 months, others just 1 month. at the end of the day i still did really well. all i can say is to keep up with them for as long as possible--within your comfort zone. if it's only taking 30 mins/day,that's probably fine. If it starts to add up, maybe you can cut out decks that you've already been reviewing for months.

Thanks for your insight.