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How to Use Anki to Improve Your Memory

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Re: How to Use Anki to Improve Your Memory

#11
I feel like Anki is not designed to help you succeed. Eventually, you'll start missing your reviews. One day you'll open Anki, see that you have hundreds of cards scheduled, and just quit the app.

The author of this article mentions he'll post an article tackling this issue, looking forward to that!

Re: How to Use Anki to Improve Your Memory

#12
post #4

Any suggestions for what to use Anki to remember in everyday life as a software engineer?

The NATO phonetic alphabet. If you've ever tried to read an email, password or any set of letters over the phone, it makes it a lot easier. It's not an obvious thing, but it's only 26 cards.

Re: How to Use Anki to Improve Your Memory

#16

I feel like Anki is not designed to help you succeed. Eventually, you'll start missing your reviews. One day you'll open Anki, see that you have hundreds of cards scheduled, and just quit the app. The author of this article mentions he'll post an article tackling this issue, looking forward to that!

I'm not sure whether or not this is true. It may be based on personality. I've seen people struggle with it, but I've never had a problem. I've been using Anki for over 5 years, and hardly ever fall behind on reviews.

I've been able to use it about 30-45 minutes per day, every single day for five years. Even when Im sick or traveling. If I know I am going to be busy, I just turn down the number of new cards in advance and by the time I'm busy my review count has usually responded.

Re: How to Use Anki to Improve Your Memory

#17

I feel like Anki is not designed to help you succeed. Eventually, you'll start missing your reviews. One day you'll open Anki, see that you have hundreds of cards scheduled, and just quit the app. The author of this article mentions he'll post an article tackling this issue, looking forward to that!

I found that issue too when I tried Anki. I missed a few days and when I returned there was a pile of cards that needed review.

I later wrote my own flashcard app[1] with spaced repetition and ended up hiding the details of what was overdue and instead just let you set up a daily goal of number of cards reviewed. When you do a lesson, it picks up the overdue cards first, but if there aren't any, it pulls in new cards instead.

It's funny because I originally thought telling you how many were due each day would be a great motivator (at least for me), but I'm finding I actually don't care. If you miss a few days, the cards still remain overdue, but when you return it doesn't feel bad.

I think for me, it's more important when learning to aim for the long-term commitment to it than to be perfect each day in your studies. If you aim for perfection, you end up not meeting your high standards and may end up quitting. Also, I think the "deadline" for when to review in spaced repetition isn't exactly accurate to the day or hour that something is due, so there's a little bit of malleability there, and I think that's okay.

[1] https://www.ussherpress.com/freshcards/

Re: How to Use Anki to Improve Your Memory

#18
> Instead of turning in your bed unable to sleep terrified of the exam coming the next day, you would soundly sleep with the knowledge that you know everything you need to know to ace the exam.

What? If you can ace the exam by memorizing, it must mean that awarding of merit in your field of study requires little more than the mere regurgitation of facts.

In a typical engineering exam, you can bring a sheet of formulas and facts, and a programmable calculator. This is so that the exam is less about rote memorization and more about application.

Re: How to Use Anki to Improve Your Memory

#19

I feel like Anki is not designed to help you succeed. Eventually, you'll start missing your reviews. One day you'll open Anki, see that you have hundreds of cards scheduled, and just quit the app. The author of this article mentions he'll post an article tackling this issue, looking forward to that!

I've hardly missed a day since starting AnkiDroid some four or five years ago? The reviews have dwindled down to single digits per day in all decks where I do not add new material.

(I don't use the desktop Anki, by the way; I used it briefly for doing some editing on decks.)

Tha said, AnkiDroid could use a vacation feature. How vacation mode could work would be simply by rescheduling all cards, delaying them by the vacation amount (14 days or whatever). Thus, no cards are due for the next 14 days, and on day 15, the same cards are due that would have been due day 1 (no "snowplow" accumulation). It would probably help if the app generated a notification a day before vacation ends.

It's incredible that neither the author of the original Anki, nor the authors of the AnkiDroid clone, recognize the value of a vacation.

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