Starting Anki Day 1/How Do YOU use Anki?

[deleted859689]

I have the Anking deck and have been watching their videos on youtube in preparation to hit the ground running from day 1. I'm planning on unsuspending cards as we go through each system block and learn the material. I was wondering - do people just search up relevant cards and unsuspend them, or is there a rhyme and reason to unsuspending cards? I plan on doing my cards first thing in the morning every day . Thanks in advance for the responses - I've been over to the /r medicalschoolanki and have read and watched a lot of videos. I feel I would get more of a solid answer from SDN. Thanks.

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[Cranjis McBasketball]

I have the Anking deck and have been watching their videos on youtube in preparation to hit the ground running from day 1. I'm planning on unsuspending cards as we go through each system block and learn the material. I was wondering - do people just search up relevant cards and unsuspend them, or is there a rhyme and reason to unsuspending cards? I plan on doing my cards first thing in the morning every day . Thanks in advance for the responses - I've been over to the /r medicalschoolanki and have read and watched a lot of videos. I feel I would get more of a solid answer from SDN. Thanks.

I figure out how many i need to do per day in order to finish like a week before the exam. Then each day I unsuspend the relevant cards from that days lectures. If there are less than the number I need to do a day then I just unsuspend however many cards in a row in order to meet the daily quota.
Once we finish the block I move all the cards into a mega deck with all my previous cards ive done and make sure to do all the reviews for that deck everyday.

Rinse and Repeat for 2 years of hell

 

[deleted859689]

I figure out how many i need to do per day in order to finish like a week before the exam. Then each day I unsuspend the relevant cards from that days lectures. If there are less than the number I need to do a day then I just unsuspend however many cards in a row in order to meet the daily quota.
Once we finish the block I move all the cards into a mega deck with all my previous cards ive done and make sure to do all the reviews for that deck everyday.

Rinse and Repeat for 2 years of hell

Have you taken/will take step 1 soon? Wish you the best and hope you do well! Do you find your classes cover the material in the decks well? Do you supplement with any online resources like B&B and do the cards? I don’t know why I’m so excited for two years of hell LOL

 

[slowthai]

On @AnatomyGrey12's brilliant recommendation, I just unsuspended 50 cards a day in whatever system that we started with. Doing it this way means that I don't have to unsuspend by keyword, so my workflow is streamlined.

The principle behind not unsuspending by keyword and hoping that you don't unsuspend 200+ cards any given day is that you will have to do all those cards anyway; why not just spread it out over time, instead of artificially inflating your workload?

I ended up being ahead of my curriculum for the first couple blocks or so. I then found out that I needed to do more cards in order to stay on pace with class. This is partly because I was doing the path cards for the block we were in (after the phys cards of course) instead of just moving on to the next system. At the time, I felt that doing the path cards immediately would really help me to understand these more difficult systems: CVS, respiratory, and renal. I'm glad I did it this way for these systems.

So instead of increasing my number of news from 50 to 100 or whatever in order to keep up, I separated the deck (renal phys) that we were about to start in class. I created another profile, imported it to that one, and started blasting away, set to finish before my exam date. This gave me several advantages:
1. I wouldn't be increasing my news for my main, 50 news a day deck. The more news you do, the more work you will have to do in the immediate and later future.
2. If it became too much to keep up with the reviews this created on the side profile, I could just suspend the cards and do them again later (post-exam of course), still finishing well before dedicated, because I included the entire deck when I originally calculated my finish date.
3. On the other hand, if I decided to keep doing the reviews after the exam, I would be ahead of my original end date by about a month! This was exciting and freeing. Having this kind of control and freedom means a lot, personally.

I've had a ton of extra time to pound many, many practice questions on top of watching BnB for every system. School life balance is great, lol.
Doing it this way may be more or less feasible depending on the pace of your curriculum. You'll just have to try it out and adjust as you go.

 

[deleted859689]

On @AnatomyGrey12's brilliant recommendation, I just unsuspended 50 cards a day in whatever system that we started with. Doing it this way means that I don't have to unsuspend by keyword, so my workflow is streamlined.

The principle behind not unsuspending by keyword and hoping that you don't unsuspend 200+ cards any given day is that you will have to do all those cards anyway; why not just spread it out over time, instead of artificially inflating your workload?

I ended up being ahead of my curriculum for the first couple blocks or so. I then found out that I needed to do more cards in order to stay on pace with class. This is partly because I was doing the path cards for the block we were in (after the phys cards of course) instead of just moving on to the next system. At the time, I felt that doing the path cards immediately would really help me to understand these more difficult systems: CVS, respiratory, and renal. I'm glad I did it this way for these systems.

So instead of increasing my number of news from 50 to 100 or whatever in order to keep up, I separated the deck (renal phys) that we were about to start in class. I created another profile, imported it to that one, and started blasting away, set to finish before my exam date. This gave me several advantages:
1. I wouldn't be increasing my news for my main, 50 news a day deck. The more news you do, the more work you will have to do in the immediate and later future.
2. If it became too much to keep up with the reviews this created on the side profile, I could just suspend the cards and do them again later (post-exam of course), still finishing well before dedicated, because I included the entire deck when I originally calculated my finish date.
3. On the other hand, if I decided to keep doing the reviews after the exam, I would be ahead of my original end date by about a month! This was exciting and freeing. Having this kind of control and freedom means a lot, personally.

I've had a ton of extra time to pound many, many practice questions on top of watching BnB for every system. School life balance is great, lol.
Doing it this way may be more or less feasible depending on the pace of your curriculum. You'll just have to try it out and adjust as you go.

Thank you for the insight and thoughtful post. Did you have BnB from the start (e.g. self purchase or from school). Any other outside resources besides anki? How much time does it take for you to go through 50 cards a day? Do you usually do your cards morning/night or does it vary? Have you ever missed a day/had to make it up?

 

[slowthai]

Thank you for the insight and thoughtful post. Did you have BnB from the start (e.g. self purchase or from school). Any other outside resources besides anki? How much time does it take for you to go through 50 cards a day? Do you usually do your cards morning/night or does it vary? Have you ever missed a day/had to make it up?

Yes, BnB from the start. I heavily depend on Google/Wikipedia for cards that I need better understanding on. I do them first thing every morning. I like to get them out of the way. I haven't missed a day, but if you absolutely need to, there's a postpone reviews add on. There's also a way to "review ahead" to account for missing days that AnKing made a video about.

 

[deleted859689]

Yes, BnB from the start. I heavily depend on Google/Wikipedia for cards that I need better understanding on. I do them first thing every morning. I like to get them out of the way. I haven't missed a day, but if you absolutely need to, there's a postpone reviews add on. There's also a way to "review ahead" to account for missing days that AnKing made a video about.

Yeah I’ve seen the review ahead video. You can customize timing to allow cards due say in the next 4 hours to show up if say right before bed you wanna get a head start for the morning. Don’t remember The explanation for missed days, but easy solution is to not miss a day lol. Do you find that you are retaining the information well?

 

[slowthai]

Yeah I’ve seen the review ahead video. You can customize timing to allow cards due say in the next 4 hours to show up if say right before bed you wanna get a head start for the morning. Don’t remember The explanation for missed days, but easy solution is to not miss a day lol. Do you find that you are retaining the information well?

True, lol. Yeah, things that I haven't seen for MONTHS will just come back immediately out of nowhere, lol. It's truly magical.

 

[slowthai]

Thank you for the insight and thoughtful post. Did you have BnB from the start (e.g. self purchase or from school). Any other outside resources besides anki? How much time does it take for you to go through 50 cards a day? Do you usually do your cards morning/night or does it vary? Have you ever missed a day/had to make it up?

Sorry, forgot to address some of your questions.

I did buy BnB. Would be great if my school supplied it, but I'm sure they'd be threatened by people ignoring their crappy, low yield lectures.

You will be going through 50 cards a day + your reviews. At the start it took me under an hour. It's grown steadily, but that just comes with doing new cards. I'm at around two hours now I think.

 

[deleted859689]

Sorry, forgot to address some of your questions.

I did buy BnB. Would be great if my school supplied it, but I'm sure they'd be threatened by people ignoring their crappy, low yield lectures.

You will be going through 50 cards a day + your reviews. At the start it took me under an hour. It's grown steadily, but that just comes with doing new cards. I'm at around two hours now I think.

Sounds like a nice work/life balance. Do you have time for clubs or volunteering?

 

[slowthai]

Sounds like a nice work/life balance. Do you have time for clubs or volunteering?

More than enough, lol. Just today, I finished all my studying by 11. Started at 6. That leaves the entire rest of the day to binge Netflix and scroll insta (shout out to the NBME), work on research, lift heavy things, volunteer until bedtime, whatever floats your boat.

 

[Chromium Surfer]

More than enough, lol. Just today, I finished all my studying by 11. Started at 6. That leaves the entire rest of the day to binge Netflix and scroll insta (shout out to the NBME), work on research, lift heavy things, volunteer until bedtime, whatever floats your boat.

Do you also look at your school lectures to fill in the gaps for the schoo specific stuff? Or does zanki usually give you enough to be able to pass?

 

[slowthai]

Do you also look at your school lectures to fill in the gaps for the schoo specific stuff? Or does zanki usually give you enough to be able to pass?

Unfortunately, my school uses in-houses only, so you've gotta at least skim the slides to pass comfortably. But that's all I do. I watch zero lectures.

 

[Chromium Surfer]

Unfortunately, my school uses in-houses only, so you've gotta at least skim the slides to pass comfortably. But that's all I do. I watch zero lectures.

Thanks for the reply. How many passes do you make with your school slides? Would you say that after doing all of the outside material, you already have a good understanding of the lecture material for the most part?

 

[slowthai]

Thanks for the reply. How many passes do you make with your school slides? Would you say that after doing all of the outside material, you already have a good understanding of the lecture material for the most part?

No problem. I just do a single, focused pass a few days before the exam. That's exactly what it is. It's mostly just filling in details at that point.

 

[Nave]

Have you read Shamin's Guide? Also, based on your research what's the consensus on the "best" deck? Is it u/AnKingMed?

 

[BoneWizard]

Honestly, Anking has everything tagged well enough that you could just copy the LY workflow.
I just follow along with lecture and go through whatever resource covers the topics in lecture and unsuspend those cards from the deck. You end up with 2 passes through the material for in house exams and then anki for review.

 

[4thtimeretaker]

On @AnatomyGrey12's brilliant recommendation, I just unsuspended 50 cards a day in whatever system that we started with. Doing it this way means that I don't have to unsuspend by keyword, so my workflow is streamlined.

The principle behind not unsuspending by keyword and hoping that you don't unsuspend 200+ cards any given day is that you will have to do all those cards anyway; why not just spread it out over time, instead of artificially inflating your workload?

I ended up being ahead of my curriculum for the first couple blocks or so. I then found out that I needed to do more cards in order to stay on pace with class. This is partly because I was doing the path cards for the block we were in (after the phys cards of course) instead of just moving on to the next system. At the time, I felt that doing the path cards immediately would really help me to understand these more difficult systems: CVS, respiratory, and renal. I'm glad I did it this way for these systems.

So instead of increasing my number of news from 50 to 100 or whatever in order to keep up, I separated the deck (renal phys) that we were about to start in class. I created another profile, imported it to that one, and started blasting away, set to finish before my exam date. This gave me several advantages:
1. I wouldn't be increasing my news for my main, 50 news a day deck. The more news you do, the more work you will have to do in the immediate and later future.
2. If it became too much to keep up with the reviews this created on the side profile, I could just suspend the cards and do them again later (post-exam of course), still finishing well before dedicated, because I included the entire deck when I originally calculated my finish date.
3. On the other hand, if I decided to keep doing the reviews after the exam, I would be ahead of my original end date by about a month! This was exciting and freeing. Having this kind of control and freedom means a lot, personally.

I've had a ton of extra time to pound many, many practice questions on top of watching BnB for every system. School life balance is great, lol.
Doing it this way may be more or less feasible depending on the pace of your curriculum. You'll just have to try it out and adjust as you go.

Thank you for this very extensive write up. So when you created a new side profile and just did the path cards on that profile how were you able to sync it back up to your main profile when you finished the block?

 

[slowthai]

Thank you for this very extensive write up. So when you created a new side profile and just did the path cards on that profile how were you able to sync it back up to your main profile when you finished the block?

No problem! I was actually doing the path cards on my main profile. The cards that I did on the side happened to be renal phys, because we were starting renal at the time and I didn't want to get behind.

When I decided to incorporate them back into my main deck on my original profile, all I did was export the deck (basically downloaded it to my computer). Then I went back to my main profile and imported it (opened it), then dragged and dropped it into my main deck.

Edit: Make sure to check "keep scheduling" when you export, otherwise you'll lose your progress.

 

[diamondkings]

@slowthai
Hey, so I've been sifting through threads bc we just finished our 1st block which was anatomy and I pretty much made my own cards on Anki which definitely sucked, but it gave me exposure to Anki and I can see how it is a game changer. Any ways I have seen a lot of your posts and have really appreciated your study plan so I was going to see if I could run some things by you? I would've PM'd but I think this could hopefully be beneficial for any lurking m1s. Our next block starts a week from this next Monday, and it is pretty much all biochem and genetics. I go to a P/F ranked school and sadly we have in-house created exams.

I'm just trying to get my Zanki plan down. I have no interest in watching our lectures, so I am definitely planning on just going over the PP to fill in any minute gaps.

So is it best to just go into the "biochemistry" tags and unsuspend all of them before the first lecture and go the ~50ish new cards a day? We have 3 tests during this 8 week block, so how is it best to go about seeing the relevant cards to whatever was covered in the lecture objectives that day? My school only provides Sketchy sadly, so I'm also going to have to decide what outside resources I want to invest in.

Final thing, I've done Anki for a few weeks, and I'm still definitely no expert. In regards to the strategy of Anki, if you see a card you have NEVER seen before, and have no clue what the answer is, do you press "again" and see it in 30 min or do you just do good and review it the next day?

Sorry for all the questions but you seemed to be extremely knowledgable and seeing anki make anatomy easy for me, I want to become a master bc I think it will make the rest of M1 a breeze.

Thanks in advance!

 

[slowthai]

@slowthai
Hey, so I've been sifting through threads bc we just finished our 1st block which was anatomy and I pretty much made my own cards on Anki which definitely sucked, but it gave me exposure to Anki and I can see how it is a game changer. Any ways I have seen a lot of your posts and have really appreciated your study plan so I was going to see if I could run some things by you? I would've PM'd but I think this could hopefully be beneficial for any lurking m1s. Our next block starts a week from this next Monday, and it is pretty much all biochem and genetics. I go to a P/F ranked school and sadly we have in-house created exams.

I'm just trying to get my Zanki plan down. I have no interest in watching our lectures, so I am definitely planning on just going over the PP to fill in any minute gaps.

So is it best to just go into the "biochemistry" tags and unsuspend all of them before the first lecture and go the ~50ish new cards a day? We have 3 tests during this 8 week block, so how is it best to go about seeing the relevant cards to whatever was covered in the lecture objectives that day? My school only provides Sketchy sadly, so I'm also going to have to decide what outside resources I want to invest in.

Final thing, I've done Anki for a few weeks, and I'm still definitely no expert. In regards to the strategy of Anki, if you see a card you have NEVER seen before, and have no clue what the answer is, do you press "again" and see it in 30 min or do you just do good and review it the next day?

Sorry for all the questions but you seemed to be extremely knowledgable and seeing anki make anatomy easy for me, I want to become a master bc I think it will make the rest of M1 a breeze.

Thanks in advance!

So this early on, I would be careful about the not watching lectures thing. It could come back to bite you depending on how low yield your curriculum is. If it was me, I would talk to upperclassmen about whether this is a viable option. There may also be some high yield study guides/notes or decks floating around that may allow you to still skip them though. Best case is that your school has minimal irrelevant stuff and Zanki alone will be enough to pass/do well.

I wouldn't recommend doing the 50 cards a day thing if you're using mainly Zanki to prepare for your in-houses because there are a crapton of cards in the Zanki biochem deck and you will most likely not get through them in time for your first exam, assuming it's in 2-3 weeks. You could front load and do 200+ a day, but you'd be in for a very bad time. Instead, you can search by keyword based on the objectives or lecture titles and unsuspend based on that. You can do this for all the lectures that are going to be on the first test. Then you can count those cards and divide that up by the number of days until your first exam, minus 2 or 3 days, allowing you to see the latest cards multiple times and giving you a buffer just in case. The other option is to just unsuspend the entire biochem deck and do 50 a day, but then use a school deck to prepare you for those immediate exams. This way you get step prep and school prep in tandem, and then you can suspend the cards from the school deck as soon as you take each exam.

If you have any questions about which resources to invest in, I'd be happy to give my opinion.

You press again for any card you don't know the answer to, whether you've seen it before or not. If you would rather see it again the next day instead of 30 minutes later, just change the lapse interval from 30 to 1440.

As far as becoming a master, something that will help for sure is watching AnKing's video series on how to use Anki.

Feel free to ask any clarifying questions

 

[diamondkings]

So this early on, I would be careful about the not watching lectures thing. It could come back to bite you depending on how low yield your curriculum is. If it was me, I would talk to upperclassmen about whether this is a viable option. There may also be some high yield study guides/notes or decks floating around that may allow you to still skip them though. Best case is that your school has minimal irrelevant stuff and Zanki alone will be enough to pass/do well.

I wouldn't recommend doing the 50 cards a day thing if you're using mainly Zanki to prepare for your in-houses because there are a crapton of cards in the Zanki biochem deck and you will most likely not get through them in time for your first exam, assuming it's in 2-3 weeks. You could front load and do 200+ a day, but you'd be in for a very bad time. Instead, you can search by keyword based on the objectives or lecture titles and unsuspend based on that. You can do this for all the lectures that are going to be on the first test. Then you can count those cards and divide that up by the number of days until your first exam, minus 2 or 3 days, allowing you to see the latest cards multiple times and giving you a buffer just in case. The other option is to just unsuspend the entire biochem deck and do 50 a day, but then use a school deck to prepare you for those immediate exams. This way you get step prep and school prep in tandem, and then you can suspend the cards from the school deck as soon as you take each exam.

If you have any questions about which resources to invest in, I'd be happy to give my opinion.

You press again for any card you don't know the answer to, whether you've seen it before or not. If you would rather see it again the next day instead of 30 minutes later, just change the lapse interval from 30 to 1440.

As far as becoming a master, something that will help for sure is watching AnKing's video series on how to use Anki.

Feel free to ask any clarifying questions

Hello again,

So after a week of kind of getting my things together, our new module starts today. After talking to our M2s, I think we are lucky and have a super good module director, so I think most of the things we get in lecture will be step relevant. So I think using BnB and other resources will work well.

My plan is to look at the objectives for the week and to do my first pass with BnB or another resource like that. I have free access to Sketchy as well, so I am wondering if checking out SketchyBiochem would be worth it??

- I'm planning on doing BnB for first time through the material, un-suspend cards from Anking deck and keep up with those even past the exams.
- Then I am lucky and have an upperclassman friend who made a really good Anki deck for each lecture, so I am also thinking about doing those and un-suspending them after each test. Only thing here, is I am afraid I will be overwhelmed with so many cards and I'm guessing there will be tons of overlap so I'm still a bit torn on this part. An upperclassman said that paying attention to the "high yield" topics that our professors provide in their powerpoints can get you a low A, so maybe it isn't worth it to do my friend's deck if hopefully BnB/Sketchy cards will be more than enough? I guess I could try it out for the first exam and see if it wipes me out/is worth it?
- Then again we are lucky and our professors give quite a few practice questions, so I'm not even sure if I will use the USMLE Rx we were given this early since a lot of that will be over my head.

Sorry for the long post, but would love any feedback you have on this. My goal is to get to where I'm studying smaller and smaller amounts because my study habits are efficient.

Thanks in advance, please be in no rush to respond, I know you are a busy medical student too!!

 

[slowthai]

Hello again,

So after a week of kind of getting my things together, our new module starts today. After talking to our M2s, I think we are lucky and have a super good module director, so I think most of the things we get in lecture will be step relevant. So I think using BnB and other resources will work well.

My plan is to look at the objectives for the week and to do my first pass with BnB or another resource like that. I have free access to Sketchy as well, so I am wondering if checking out SketchyBiochem would be worth it??

- I'm planning on doing BnB for first time through the material, un-suspend cards from Anking deck and keep up with those even past the exams.
- Then I am lucky and have an upperclassman friend who made a really good Anki deck for each lecture, so I am also thinking about doing those and un-suspending them after each test. Only thing here, is I am afraid I will be overwhelmed with so many cards and I'm guessing there will be tons of overlap so I'm still a bit torn on this part. An upperclassman said that paying attention to the "high yield" topics that our professors provide in their powerpoints can get you a low A, so maybe it isn't worth it to do my friend's deck if hopefully BnB/Sketchy cards will be more than enough? I guess I could try it out for the first exam and see if it wipes me out/is worth it?
- Then again we are lucky and our professors give quite a few practice questions, so I'm not even sure if I will use the USMLE Rx we were given this early since a lot of that will be over my head.

Sorry for the long post, but would love any feedback you have on this. My goal is to get to where I'm studying smaller and smaller amounts because my study habits are efficient.

Thanks in advance, please be in no rush to respond, I know you are a busy medical student too!!

I've heard not very good things about sketchy biochem. If you're looking for memory hook videos for biochem, I'd go with Pixorize.

Yeah, it really comes down to what you prefer and what exam scores you're aiming for. You could try out the school deck for a couple exams and see how you feel (and do). If it's working well but it takes too much time, you could switch to just reading the slides like the upperclassman suggested. The good thing is that you're covering all of the material through AnKing first, so you should be able to run through the school cards very quickly. Since you said your school doesn't focus too much on the low yield, this should have a good chance of working. You could even delete the cards from your school deck testing the same information that's in AnKing to lessen your workload.

Yeah, definitely don't recommend doing any Rx questions because they depend on multi-system knowledge that you just don't have yet.

No need to apologize haha. I'm happy to respond to any questions you may have! And you will get more efficient. I can tell just by the way you're thinking; you're on the right track.