The Official Anki Thread

[starstarie]

This might be a silly question but how do I get the hard interval to be exactly the interval that has passed. For example, if I see a card that I last saw 1 month ago, hard = 1mo. Id think it would be having the lapse to 100% but I have that and my cards aren't showing hard as the same interval that has just passed, its always a little more.

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[chronicidal]

This might be a silly question but how do I get the hard interval to be exactly the interval that has passed. For example, if I see a card that I last saw 1 month ago, hard = 1mo. Id think it would be having the lapse to 100% but I have that and my cards aren't showing hard as the same interval that has just passed, its always a little more.

Lapse is for the red/"again" button. I don't know of a way to screw with the details of the timing algorithm such that the 'hard' card timing is disproportionate to the others. I think if you reduce the 'interval modifier', all the intervals (hard, medium, easy) will be reduced proportionately.

 

[starstarie]

ok...

 

[springslight]

How much time do you guys spend on anki per day?

 

[sinombre]

How much time do you guys spend on anki per day?

Completely depends. Some days not at all, and the worst days probably somewhere in the ballpark of 14-16 hours. The 14-16 hour days are for memorizing several hundred brand new flashcards with a fair amount of information on each card (e.g. what are all of the nuclei of the thalamus and what do they do). It takes a lot less time to review old stuff than it does to memorize something for the first time.

 

[Mehd School]

I'm sorry, I thought I just read that sometimes you spend 16 hours looking at anki cards.

 

[sinombre]

I'm sorry, I thought I just read that sometimes you spend 16 hours looking at anki cards.

Sort of. It's not a passive process... in other words I don't just sit there and read the cards. I actively memorize the them... often times by writing stuff out on scratch paper. We only had 5 tests for all of first year and each one with a ridiculous amount of information. I would usually take it easy for the first week or two of each block (maybe spend 8 hours a day listening to lectures/studying/doing school stuff which often included not studying, like clinical skills or PBL) and then increase the intensity on the weeks leading up to the final.

 

[chronicidal]

How much time do you guys spend on anki per day?

70-90 minutes of doing cards.
Hours more to learning the concepts behind new cards added.

 

[dextor2003]

.

 

[danse]

Edit: Never-mind. Figured it out. I'm such a dunce. Thanks for the great thread.

 

[polo123]

How do you all use Anki to study anatomy? I was thinking finding images and labeling them manually using onenote or a paint program and then using image occlusion on Anki. It doesn't seem very efficient though.. I'll be an M1 in the fall so just wondering if anyone has figured out a system that has worked for them.

 

[eefen]

How do you all use Anki to study anatomy? I was thinking finding images and labeling them manually using onenote or a paint program and then using image occlusion on Anki. It doesn't seem very efficient though.. I'll be an M1 in the fall so just wondering if anyone has figured out a system that has worked for them.

Find an online text you like, screen capture an image you want, and use image occlusion to cover up the labels.

 

[starstarie]

Or even just Google an image with similar depth. There are TONS of images

 

[Pose]

Do any of you use Anki to study anatomy tables? Just started anatomy, but already we have huge tables of muscle attachment, origin, innervation, action, and blood supply. I have made custom study fields corresponding to these, but can't for the life of me figure out how to import the tables into Anki. I've tried to follow some Youtube tutorials that involve copying/pasting into Excel, saving as .txt, converting to UTF-8, etc...but it won't create cards in Anki. Or I guess I could enter this info manually?

 

[surely]

Do any of you use Anki to study anatomy tables? Just started anatomy, but already we have huge tables of muscle attachment, origin, innervation, action, and blood supply. I have made custom study fields corresponding to these, but can't for the life of me figure out how to import the tables into Anki. I've tried to follow some Youtube tutorials that involve copying/pasting into Excel, saving as .txt, converting to UTF-8, etc...but it won't create cards in Anki. Or I guess I could enter this info manually?

I import cards into Anki all the time, but I don't use Excel for this. I just use Notepad (PC) or TextEdit (Mac) or TextWrangler (Mac) to create this as a text document.

Create a new .txt file in one of the above programs, and enter the stuff you want separated by a character of your choosing. I like to use |, the pipe character.

You say you've already made custom study fields, which is a great start! Custom fields are something I just got into recently, and I'm excited to figure out new use cases for them. Anyway, the custom note fields I made were Name of muscle, Origin, Insertion, Innervation, Function. (I also included an Image field, but I don't know much about importing images into Anki, so just pretend that's not there.) So my text file would look like this:

Name of fake muscle|Origin of fake muscle|Insertion of fake muscle|Innervation of fake muscle|Function of fake muscle|Anatomy
Name of second fake muscle|Origin of second fake muscle|Insertion of second fake muscle|Innervation of second fake muscle|Function of second fake muscle|Anatomy

...and so on, except with real muscle names and info. Each muscle deserves its own line in the file, and each piece of information is separated by a | character, and they're always listed in the same order. The final field is the tag, which you might make more descriptive than Anatomy.

Save it as a .txt with UTF-8 formatting, open up Anki, and click the Import File button. Select the file and hit Open. Click the button that says "Fields separated by" and Anki will prompt you to tell it which character you used to separate your facts. For example, if you used |, enter | and click OK. Anki will then ask you what Field 1 is mapped to - Map it to Name of muscle. Map Field 2 to Origin, etc, all the way up to the last field, which you should map as a tag.

Then...click Import and you should be done! If that didn't work, can you let me know what error message Anki's giving you?

Also, in addition to making custom fields, I made custom card types:

By using this kind of card, I basically have a template that fills in the prompts. So instead of just having the front side of the card say "Biceps" it says "Biceps origin:". This saves me the trouble of writing that out for every card I import. The other cool thing is that if one of the fields is left blank, the conditional formatting in the "Front Template" section makes it so that it doesn't bother creating a card for that field. So if I, for some reason, didn't fill out the origin, I wouldn't have a card that says "Biceps origin" with a blank back side. To figure all that out, I followed the "conditional formatting" tutorial here, though what I made is different from what the narrator was trying to make and he was using an older version of Anki:

Edit: Lol, realizing now that I forgot blood supply. You can tell I haven't started anatomy yet...

 

[Pose]

That was an amazing response! Thank you so much for taking the time to write that up. Worked like a charm.

 

[surely]

That was an amazing response! Thank you so much for taking the time to write that up. Worked like a charm.

Awesome! I looove Anki a distressing amount, and I'm always excitedly being like, "Hey, boyfriend, look what I figured out how to do today!" and he's always like "That's nice, dear," haha. So it's nice to have the chance to share information with someone who actually cares.

 

[Dr Dazzle]

Hey guys I'm trying to use Anki as a traditional flashcard system closer to exams. How do you use the cram feature?

 

[Chelewn]

@chronicidal

If you go to preferences what are your settings for:
- next day starts at X hours past midnight
- learn ahead limit X mins

 

[Chelewn]

and @chronicidal have you changed any settings since you wrote this? And if you did so - why?

Here are the time settings I use and may work well for others who make their own cards. (If you do not make your own cards, you might consider adding a learning step or reducing the length of the first learning interval.)

New cards:

• Steps in min: 10 2880
• Order: random order
• New cards/day: 100
• Graduating interval: 4 days
• Easy interval: 7 days
• Starting ease: 250%
• Bury related new cards: checked

Reviews:

• Maximum reviews/day: 200
• Easy bonus: 150%
• Interval modifier: 135%
• Bury related new cards: checked

Lapses:

• Steps in min: 20
• New interval: 20%
• Minimum interval: 2 days
• Leech threshold: 8 days
• Leech action: suspend card

With these settings, I'm getting 91.3% correct on mature cards. (This is the key number you want to target when playing with settings, but they won't change for several months after you change your settings. You want to balance long-term retention and efficiency

 

[chronicidal]

@chronicidal

If you go to preferences what are your settings for:
- next day starts at X hours past midnight
- learn ahead limit X mins

5 hours
20 minutes
haven't changed settings since

 

[Robotman]

I miss the OP.

 

[surely]

So Firecracker has an explicit option to deal with the use case where you took a break from flashcard review for a few days, only to come back and have an overwhelming card count. There's a "reschedule cards over 7 (or 14 or 30) days" option. Anki doesn't have anything similar, right? So the best thing to do would be to just tackle as many of your backlogged cards as possible and then take care of the rest the next day (or on subsequent days) - It seems like this accomplishes the same thing as the "reschedule cards" feature in Firecracker, but I wanted to bounce it off of you guys and hear your thoughts.

 

[sinombre]

I miss the OP.

Sounds like something the OP would say.

 

[chronicidal]

So Firecracker has an explicit option to deal with the use case where you took a break from flashcard review for a few days, only to come back and have an overwhelming card count. There's a "reschedule cards over 7 (or 14 or 30) days" option. Anki doesn't have anything similar, right? So the best thing to do would be to just tackle as many of your backlogged cards as possible and then take care of the rest the next day (or on subsequent days) - It seems like this accomplishes the same thing as the "reschedule cards" feature in Firecracker, but I wanted to bounce it off of you guys and hear your thoughts.

The reason there exists a setting for maximum review count per day is so that you will never see a card count that seems overwhelming to the point of demotivating paralysis for you. The cards in your hidden backlog queue are just pushed to the next day.

 

[Pose]

Any thoughts on how effective cloze deletions are vs. Q&A type questions? I generally do a mixture, but am contemplating doing as many cloze cards as possible moving forward because a.) they're easier to make, and b.) they prevent me from making confusing cards with multiple parts. It just doesn't seem like it requires the same type of recall, and I'm worried I won't learn the material as well. Anyone prefer one type to the other?

 

[chronicidal]

IMO, you get more contextual hints with cloze cards, so your memory of the fact is less robust. My deck is maybe 20% cloze cards because they're easy to make. Regarding multiple parts: that's a bad idea for any kind of card.

 

[Awared]

I haven't used anki for two weeks and I'm doing my best to catch up with card making. Is it a good idea to refresh my deck after catching up so I start the review process all over again?

 

[Robotman]

I have a premade FA deck and Pathoma deck. Haven't started these decks because I made the poor decision to devote time to Firecracker.

My question is: how do I pluck questions out of these decks, put them in a secondary deck and then after reviewing them, make them affect the main deck until I start dwindling it down?

 

[chronicidal]

I have a premade FA deck and Pathoma deck. Haven't started these decks because I made the poor decision to devote time to Firecracker.

My question is: how do I pluck questions out of these decks, put them in a secondary deck and then after reviewing them, make them affect the main deck until I start dwindling it down?

filtered deck

 

[Robotman]

filtered deck

Thanks for the tip,

now I'm trying to add physiology respiratory to a filtered deck, the deck i'm using has the tag "physiology respiratory" however when i type physiology respiratory to the search of the filtered deck it tells me to revise my search. How can I make the search for the filter pick out tags?


EDIT: I just tried to create a filtered deck then remove cards from it and it deleted from the main deck, using alt-z restored them but I can't remove cards from filtered deck without affecting the main decks

 

[surely]

Thanks for the tip,

now I'm trying to add physiology respiratory to a filtered deck, the deck i'm using has the tag "physiology respiratory" however when i type physiology respiratory to the search of the filtered deck it tells me to revise my search. How can I make the search for the filter pick out tags?


EDIT: I just tried to create a filtered deck then remove cards from it and it deleted from the main deck, using alt-z restored them but I can't remove cards from filtered deck without affecting the main decks

Do you want to maybe duplicate the main deck so that when you create the filtered deck it deletes it from the deck you don't care about? ...maybe I don't understand what you're trying to accomplish, sorry if my advice is terrible.

 

[Robotman]

Do you want to maybe duplicate the main deck so that when you create the filtered deck it deletes it from the deck you don't care about? ...maybe I don't understand what you're trying to accomplish, sorry if my advice is terrible.

I have a FA deck with 6k cards, a path deck with 6k cards. They are all seperated by system in path deck and system/class in FA deck. When i click the FA deck for respiratory and I haven't finished studying all of respiratory, I don't want to do 300 cards of stuff I haven't covered yet during that study session. So for example, in respiratory for FA, there are 150 cards, but 32 of them are anatomy respiratory (tagged as such) and 118 are physiology respiratory (tagged as such), I want to do the 118 physiology respiratory so I created a filter deck but when i typed "physiology respiratory" exactly how its written in the tags, it says that no such cards are found. So then i tried to work around it and created the filtered deck and tried to remove the anatomy cards, but they were removed from main deck as well.

I hope that clarifies it a little.

 

[surely]

I have a FA deck with 6k cards, a path deck with 6k cards. They are all seperated by system in path deck and system/class in FA deck. When i click the FA deck for respiratory and I haven't finished studying all of respiratory, I don't want to do 300 cards of stuff I haven't covered yet during that study session. So for example, in respiratory for FA, there are 150 cards, but 32 of them are anatomy respiratory (tagged as such) and 118 are physiology respiratory (tagged as such), I want to do the 118 physiology respiratory so I created a filter deck but when i typed "physiology respiratory" exactly how its written in the tags, it says that no such cards are found. So then i tried to work around it and created the filtered deck and tried to remove the anatomy cards, but they were removed from main deck as well.

I hope that clarifies it a little.

Ha, I think I have the same deck.

What I did is I created a second "active" deck where I move all the cards I'm interested into. So I go into the browser, and, in this case, search for:

tag:"physiology respiratory"

Then I select all the cards that show up in the search results and click Change Deck, then choose the "active" deck. Then I review cards from the "active" deck.

When I do this with your example, I don't end up with any of the anatomy cards in the "active" deck, which is perfect.

What do you think about this?

 

[Dr Dazzle]

Does the Anki app for iPhone/ipad require wireless connection to use? Or do cards sync automatically when you get Internet connection?

 

[surely]

Does the Anki app for iPhone/ipad require wireless connection to use? Or do cards sync automatically when you get Internet connection?

No and no. By which I mean... You have to manually hit the sync button when you have an internet connection, at which point it shows a brief syncing screen. From that point forward, you can use it offline. You just reconnect when you need to sync again. Does that make sense?

 

[Dr Dazzle]

No and no. By which I mean... You have to manually hit the sync button when you have an internet connection, at which point it shows a brief syncing screen. From that point forward, you can use it offline. You just reconnect when you need to sync again. Does that make sense?

So basically to get your daily questions you would need to sync again. But your work done on the app will be accounted for after the sync right?

Also, does everyone just keep 1 or 2 decks going at one time? It was mentioned how everything slows down if you have too many decks. Is that true? Should the goal be just to keep decks at minimum to prevent crazy long syncing times?

 

[allojay]

Anyone know how to join separate decks on anki into one big deck? I've been trying to do it on my mac to no avail. Thanks in advance!

 

[surely]

Anyone know how to join separate decks on anki into one big deck? I've been trying to do it on my mac to no avail. Thanks in advance!

Go into the Anki browser, select all the cards from one deck, then click Change Deck at the top and choose the deck you want to move them to. Does that work for you?

 

[surely]

So basically to get your daily questions you would need to sync again. But your work done on the app will be accounted for after the sync right?

Also, does everyone just keep 1 or 2 decks going at one time? It was mentioned how everything slows down if you have too many decks. Is that true? Should the goal be just to keep decks at minimum to prevent crazy long syncing times?

Er, you don't have to sync again to "get your daily questions." You only need to sync when you've made changes to your Anki deck using another device (like if you added cards using your computer, or you reviewed cards on your computer, or you reviewed or edited cards on AnkiWeb using a normal web browser). Syncing would then apply those changes to the deck on your phone. The idea of syncing is just to keep the deck identical in every way across multiple devices.

For example: If you loaded a premade deck into Anki on your computer and then synced it just once to your phone and then ONLY reviewed and edited cards on your phone, you would theoretically never need to sync again, because you have no need for the deck to be updated on your computer. Make sense?

I'd still recommend syncing at the end of each review session so that your progress is backed up. That way, if your phone was lost or stolen, you could recover your most recent progress because the Anki servers have a recent synced copy of your deck. Get what I'm saying?

I keep decks at a minimum, yeah. They say it does help the program run faster, but I've never experienced it running slowly. The other reason I keep everything in one deck is that I want to review all my cards together. I don't want to review a deck specifically for microbio, and another one specifically for anatomy, because that would prime my brain to be ready for JUST micro cards or JUST anatomy facts during that study session. Which could make a difference.

 

[allojay]

Go into the Anki browser, select all the cards from one deck, then click Change Deck at the top and choose the deck you want to move them to. Does that work for you?

Thanks for responding but I'm not sure I get what you're saying. How do I select all the cards from one deck?

 

[allojay]

Thanks for responding but I'm not sure I get what you're saying. How do I select all the cards from one deck?

Thanks! I figured it out. You're awesome!! Have a good one!

 

[darklabel]

I have a premade FA deck and Pathoma deck. Haven't started these decks because I made the poor decision to devote time to Firecracker.

My question is: how do I pluck questions out of these decks, put them in a secondary deck and then after reviewing them, make them affect the main deck until I start dwindling it down?

Why was devoting time to Firecracker a waste of time? I have thought about getting a subscription for it and using Anki as well for class.

 

[surely]

Why was devoting time to Firecracker a waste of time? I have thought about getting a subscription for it and using Anki as well for class.

I'm not the person you're quoting here, but I'll say this: Firecracker questions and answers are not written in the way you'd like your Anki cards to be written. Too vague with too much information in the answer. So if I know 8 out of the 10 parts of the answer, how do I rate my knowledge?

Use a free account for the month before deciding whether you should shell out for a paid subscription. I wish I hadn't.

 

[darklabel]

I'm not the person you're quoting here, but I'll say this: Firecracker questions and answers are not written in the way you'd like your Anki cards to be written. Too vague with too much information in the answer. So if I know 8 out of the 10 parts of the answer, how do I rate my knowledge?

Use a free account for the month before deciding whether you should shell out for a paid subscription. I wish I hadn't.

Thanks for the heads up. Would you suggest just making Anki first year then or another service to supplement class?

 

[surely]

Thanks for the heads up. Would you suggest just making Anki first year then or another service to supplement class?

I'm a first year myself, and a die-hard Anki fan. Other people who are further along in their studies really like Firecracker. And maybe they know what they're talking about in a way that I don't.

 

[GFP]

I started using Anki in my first week of medical school, and I really like it so far. I've been trying my best to use it everyday, since Anki is best used for long-term memorization. We are currently in a multidisciplinary course (biochemistry, molecular biology, cell, etc.). I've been making decks for each subject (i.e. one for biochem and one for molecular bio), instead of making mini-decks for each lecture or one large deck for the entire course.

I do have a few questions about how to optimize my Anki use:

1) I don't fully understand the settings, but what settings do you all prefer for studying? I currently have my cards in random order, with a max of 30 cards per day.

2) A few of my cards say "Edit to Customize" at the top, and there are multiple copies of the same card and some say "Edit to Customize" more than once on the same card. When I delete one of the "Edit to Customize" cards, it deletes all the copies of that card. How do I fix this glitch?

3) Ideally you are supposed to review your cards daily, but when do you all make new cards? I've been making cards over entire one week's worth of lecture on the weekends. I would like to make cards the same day as lectures, but I haven't had time. Is there a rhythm that works for you all?

 

[surely]

1) I don't fully understand the settings, but what settings do you all prefer for studying? I currently have my cards in random order, with a max of 30 cards per day.

1) 30 cards per day is an absurdly low number! Did you maybe mean 300? Anyway, here are my settings... if you have specific questions about why I chose a certain value, please let me know:

2) A few of my cards say "Edit to Customize" at the top, and there are multiple copies of the same card and some say "Edit to Customize" more than once on the same card. When I delete one of the "Edit to Customize" cards, it deletes all the copies of that card. How do I fix this glitch?

I've never heard of this before. I googled "Anki edit to customize" and saw a few other people reporting the same problem. It sounds like the card template you're using has "edit to customize" written in to every card. This should help you fix it: When one of those cards comes up in review, hit E or click Edit to bring up the editing view. Then click the Cards... button in that view, and see if the Front or Back Template fields have the "Edit to Customize" text in their boxes. You can then delete that line of text from the template. You should also come back here and tell me what that note type is - To find out the name of the note type, look at the top of the window that shows the templates. For instance, if it was called BananaNote, the window showing the templates would say in the title bar "Card Types for BananaNote". However, I'm not sure what to make of the fact that you have multiple cards with the same information... Have you tried using the Remove Duplicates/Find Duplicates option?

3) Ideally you are supposed to review your cards daily, but when do you all make new cards? I've been making cards over entire weeks worth of lecture on the weekends. I would like to make cards the same day as lectures, but I haven't had time. Is there a rhythm that works for you all?

I make cards the same day as lectures. Sometimes I manage to make cards during lecture, depending on the subject, but that's less common. I try to review my cards for the day before lecture, attend lecture (or stream it from home), then make new cards for that day's material and review those cards. That's basically all I do to study.

 

[mehc012]

1) 30 cards per day is an absurdly low number! Did you maybe mean 300? Anyway, here are my settings... if you have specific questions about why I chose a certain value, please let me know:

View attachment 185241 View attachment 185242View attachment 185243View attachment 185244




I've never heard of this before. I googled "Anki edit to customize" and saw a few other people reporting the same problem. It sounds like the card template you're using has "edit to customize" written in to every card. This should help you fix it: When one of those cards comes up in review, hit E or click Edit to bring up the editing view. Then click the Cards... button in that view, and see if the Front or Back Template fields have the "Edit to Customize" text in their boxes. You can then delete that line of text from the template. You should also come back here and tell me what that note type is - To find out the name of the note type, look at the top of the window that shows the templates. For instance, if it was called BananaNote, the window showing the templates would say in the title bar "Card Types for BananaNote". However, I'm not sure what to make of the fact that you have multiple cards with the same information... Have you tried using the Remove Duplicates/Find Duplicates option?



I make cards the same day as lectures. Sometimes I manage to make cards during lecture, depending on the subject, but that's less common. I try to review my cards for the day before lecture, attend lecture (or stream it from home), then make new cards for that day's material and review those cards. That's basically all I do to study.

I feel as if you'd need fewer cards/day if you didn't have SO many steps in your Learning stage. At least in my experience, the Learning stage is the least useful of them all when making your own cards because if you are really grappling with the information in order to make good cards, you've done most of the learning before the card was ever seen.

As for Decks...my personal strategy is to have a Current deck, a Review deck, and a SideProject deck. Current has a high review/new due count and shorter interval gains, Review has a normal review due count, low new due count, and SideProject can just be ignored if I'm in a crunch.

I may eventually update this to Current, CurrentReview, and LongTerm, with the first being 'material I have not been tested on yet', the second being 'material I want to keep fairly fresh for Steps eventually', and LongTerm being 'anything I have ever learned in Anki which I am not going to be tested on again.'

Anywho, I've got a thread going for Anki questions, so if there are any setting-specific Qs, feel free to pop it in there.

As a final note, I strongly feel that if your Anki cards are in fact nothing but 'disjointed factoids', you really ought to rethink your card creation methods. It is more than possible to make a deck which is full of questions requiring, yes, fact recall, but also 'big picture' and interrelation of concepts. If you can do that - understand the concepts well enough to write good questions for them - you will learn and remember the information better, regardless of any SRS system.

 

[GFP]

1) 30 cards per day is an absurdly low number! Did you maybe mean 300? Anyway, here are my settings... if you have specific questions about why I chose a certain value, please let me know:

Haha, well the default setting is like 20 cards per day. And also, I thought it would be good to develop long-term memorization by doing a little each day. However, I do realize that I need to speed it up. I am going to try your setting and see how it works. Do you think your settings should be good for MS-I and MS-II courses (about 5-8 weeks in duration)? I also have a terrible memory, so would your intervals still work?

I've never heard of this before. I googled "Anki edit to customize" and saw a few other people reporting the same problem. It sounds like the card template you're using has "edit to customize" written in to every card. This should help you fix it: When one of those cards comes up in review, hit E or click Edit to bring up the editing view. Then click the Cards... button in that view, and see if the Front or Back Template fields have the "Edit to Customize" text in their boxes. You can then delete that line of text from the template. You should also come back here and tell me what that note type is - To find out the name of the note type, look at the top of the window that shows the templates. For instance, if it was called BananaNote, the window showing the templates would say in the title bar "Card Types for BananaNote". However, I'm not sure what to make of the fact that you have multiple cards with the same information... Have you tried using the Remove Duplicates/Find Duplicates option?

I am going try this and see if it will fix it. I'll let you know.

EDIT: It works!! Thanks for your help. I clicked on edit -> cards and saw that there were multiple copies (w/ "edit to customize") so I deleted those cards and kept the original. I don't know about the note type, though...