agentydragon

Cross-posted from my website. I’ve used Anki for ~3 years, have 37k cards and did 0.5M reviews. I have learned some useful heuristics for using it effectively. I’ll borrow software engineering terminology and call heuristics for “what’s good” patterns and heuristics for “what’s bad” antipatterns. Cards with antipatterns are unnecessarily difficult to learn. I will first go over antipatterns I have noticed, and then share patterns I use, mostly to counteract the antipatterns. I will then throw in a grab-bag of things I’ve found useful to learn with Anki, and some miscellaneous tips. Alex Vermeer’s free book Anki Essentials helped me learn how to use Anki effectively, and I can wholeheartedly recommend it. I learned at least about the concept of interference from it, but I am likely reinventing other wheels from it. Antipatterns Interference Interference occurs when trying to learn two cards together is harder than learning just one of them - one card interferes with learning another one. For example, when learning languages, I often confuse words which rhyme together or have a similar meaning (e.g., “vergeblich” and “erheblich” in German). Interference is bad, because you will keep getting those cards wrong, and Anki will keep showing them to you, which is frustrating. Ambiguity Ambiguity occurs when the front side of a card allows multiple answers, but the back side does not list all options. For example, if the front side of a English → German card says “great”, there are at least two acceptable answers: “großartig” and “gewaltig”. Ambiguity is bad, because when you review an ambiguous card and give the answer the card does not expect, you need to spend mental effort figuring out: “Do I accept my answer or do I go with Again?” You will spend this effort every time you review the card. When you (eventually, given enough time) go with Again, Anki will treat the card as lapsed for reasons that don’t track whether you are learning the facts you want to learn