Anki is an amazing tool, but like any tool it can be misused. If you misuse Anki you will waste time and retain less information. Those are two pretty bad things. In this video, I'm gonna
show you some kind of extra tips compared to my previous videos on how to get the most out of Anki. Let's get to it. So the first tip is to get organized. If we go to my Anki deck over here you will see that I have every
single thing under one deck. So when I wanna start studying, all I do is I just click this
deck and start studying, bam. And it may seem like a small thing but when you start to accumulate
decks, like I have here, and then if you look at this decks which is what you have
in the very beginning, if you start trying to
study through every one of these individual decks,
you're gonna waste time. The other good thing about
studying under one deck is that it mixes everything
together randomly. If you agree with Hebbian theory, which I wanna talk about it, but it says basically that if you learn something mixed altogether you're gonna remember it for longer as opposed to just
studying one track mind. But another more simple
way to think about it is whatever you're learning about gonna be like one topic like
the brain or the heart? No, it's probably gonna be all of those things mixed together. So when you study, right? You wanna study everything mixed together. So that's exactly what you do when you put everything under one deck. Quick little thing to make sure you are doing this mixed learning is you wanna go to kind of this, for me, it's not a cog wheel, but you wanna go to the cog
wheel on the side of your thing. Go to Options and make sure
that your Order of New Cards is Show new cards in random order. And then your Reviews,
you don't have to touch, just when you go into the deck they will mix them up automatically. So I'm just editing this video, I forgot to say one thing that the subjects that are
under your individual deck, your AnKing deck, will
be only done randomly if you have the Anki
scheduler v2.1 enabled. So I'm gonna show you guys how
to make sure that's enabled. So all you wanna do is go
to Anki on the top left. Hit Preferences. Go to Scheduling and then you'll see Anki 2.1 scheduler (beta). So you just wanna make sure
that that is checked off. All the reviews underneath
one heading deck will be randomized if
you have this selected. So again, all your reviews
underneath the heading deck will be randomized if you have
Anki 2.1 scheduler enabled. So the next thing that's
really accelerated my studying and helped me study a ton
more, is the Pomodoro Method. No, you won't be studying with a tomato, but you will be studying
on time-based interval. So what I have on my computer is this little nice thing on the top here. And then I have it to study, and then I'll go for 25 minutes and then it'll give me a
five-minute break time. So I think this was the Be
Focused-Focus Timer app. And you can set this in
whichever way you want. You can do 15 minutes, 10
minutes, 25 minutes, five minutes. But I found the best way for me is the way it was originally
done by some Italian guy, And he said to do 25 minutes
of studying, five-minute break, 25 minutes of studying, five-minute break, 25 minutes of studying, five-minute break, 25 minutes of studying. No, don't worry your video
isn't stuck on repeat, then you do a 30-minute break. So three sets of 25-five and
then the last set is 25 and 30. And the reason this is great is because we tend to just lose focus if we stare at a screen for so long. And also when you just set out such a crazy amount of time to study, you often tell yourself, Oh, I need a break, I need
to take a break or something. But if you actually have
the timer set in here, it kind of forces you
to study in this time and then take a break in this time. Another thing is when
it's your break time, don't just go into a YouTube video, unless you're watching
a Zach Highley video, go on to get up and like walk
around or do something else. The next tip is when you
are finding new cards to study in your Anki deck, don't use cards that are
under specific decks, instead use cards that are
tagged in a certain way. 'Cause as you can see with my deck, if I wanted to go through
and learn it based on deck, I mean, I would go,
literally, I would go insane, 'cause this is just a
complete and utter mess. I wouldn't use this way, instead I would go to the Browse section and then if you are using the AnKing, and if you've watched my previous video, you know everything is tagged very nicely. And a question I had in another video is no these are not individual decks. As you can see these little icons here, these little icons mean tags, as opposed to kind of this,
looks like stacks of paper, which are your individual deck. So one little bonus tip for those of you that are using the AnKing deck is that, if you want and you can't
find tags to certain things but you wanna start going through cards, you can start unsuspending
cards based of the date created. Now, why do you do this? Well, the guy that originally made the decks, the Zanki decks, created the cards in
kind of a logical order. So for example, on endocrinology, all this kind of stuff makes sense. And then as you go farther down, you might get into the physiology. And then as you go even farther down you might get into the pathology. So again, if you wanna just
kind of study cards in a deck, you can go to the decks
on the left-hand side here and just sort by date created. When you sort by date created, you'll be able to go
through in the order that the original Zanki created these decks. Tip number four is Edit Your Cards. It's really easy to fall
into the trap of memorizing instead of understanding with Anki. And when you actually edit these cards you start to build
connections in your brain. So if we look at a specific card where this editing may actually come in. A tip is when you edit it with the AnKing, if you're editing for the AnKing deck, is you wanna put the notes under your Lecture Notes
and not your Extra section. Because what happens when
the AnKing updates the decks, which I think v8 is coming out soon, when he actually updates these decks, usually there might be
some new extra information or some other things that are
being thrown in by people. And what happens, if you write information
in this Extra section, and then you update the deck, and you don't go through some
special kind of tricky steps, then that extra information
that you wrote in will get overwritten. So what I like to do personally, is I like to write this extra
information in Lecture Notes. This way this information
will never be overwritten and it will be saved no
matter what updates you do across the AnKing decks. So if we look at an individual card, for example, this one is Lichen sclerosus is characterized by
thinning of the epidermis and sclerosis fibrosis of the dermis. So I also know it
presents, this leukoplakia, presents in two other places the vulvar carcinoma and
lichen simplex chronicus. So, if I know those two things that are connected to this one card, I wouldn't know that kind
of just by this front card. So what I might do is that, presents my type in under Lecture Notes, Presents similarly to
lichen simplex chronicus and vulvar carcinoma with leukoplakia. And what I'll do now,
when I study this card, is I'll be able to hit the Lecture Notes and see that piece of
information pop up for me which is a great way to kind of link this information in my head. Because when you're a doctor, when you're taking this big test, maybe you see leukoplakia and you're gonna need to work backwards. So if you see leukoplakia, you'll be like, okay, now I know it's
either vulvar carcinoma, lichen simplex chronicus or lichen, what was the other? See it, this is where the memory comes in, lichen sclerosis. Another reason to add
these personal tidbits to every single card is that if we believe the idea that
memories are neural connections and the stronger a memory is the more neural connections there are, then shouldn't you wanna
make as many connections in this topic to another topic? I think, yes, this is if you
of course believe the theory that neural connections are the
reason that we have memories and things like that. The fifth tip, and I would
say the most important tip is do the cards every day. This is the way the
Anki algorithm is built. If you're not doing the cards every day, you're messing with Anki and Anki is like, I
don't like you anymore. And you won't like your retention either. Okay, we're gonna cut that,
we're going to cut that. What you need to do to
get the most out of Anki is study every day for
long-term retention. You gotta do that. A kind of controversial or maybe not controversial opinion I have, is that many people say that you should do your Anki
cards on your downtime, at the grocery store, when
you're at the gym, God no. I think Anki is the most
important thing I do every day in regards to retaining like
medical school information. So I make sure it's the
first thing I do every day. I wake up in the morning
and smash my cards. Okay, the next thing I'm gonna talk about, it gets a little bit complicated and I'll try and walk you guys through it, is aim for an 80 to 90%
success rate on reviews. So what does that mean? Okay, let's go to Anki,
let's go to my Anki. So when you were reviewing
older or mature cards which are cards that are greater than 21 days until their next review, you should be marking
good on 80 to 90% of them. Now, if you are marking
good on these cards or these review cards, more than 90%, then the cards are too easy. If you're marking it less than
80%, the cards are too hard. There's a good amount of
research to back this up. And a couple other Anki professionals talk about this kind of Goldilocks zone of being between 80 and 90%
in this kind of success rate. And the idea behind this is that your brain likes a challenge. It doesn't want things that are too easy and it doesn't want
things that are too hard. Okay, we're gonna go to Stats. The only thing I want you to worry about is kind of these retention rates. So this is what I had for the past day, this is what I had for the past week and this is what I had for the past month. And I'm doing pretty good. You wanna be hitting between 80 and 90% in this retention rate. And if you don't have
this picture showing up you need to download
the True Retention app. This number was, for example, 97.9%, well that would mean my
cards are way too easy. So, what I would do is I would go back to settings of my main
deck, go to Options. And the thing I would touch is this Interval modifier right here. And what the Interval modifier is, is it adjusts the time in between cards for every single card you click. So it'll adjust the
interview interval time for a hard click, a good
click or an easy click. So if, for example,
the card would normally be one day distance when you hit good, if this interval modifier was 200%, it would be two days
and so on and so forth. So, if my cards were
showing up too frequently and this percentage
was too high above 90%, I would go to these settings go to my Interval
modifier and change it up. I might change it to, I don't know, 110% or 115% and see what
that's like for a week and then go back to my Stats
and see if I'm getting closer to that 85% number that I wanna be at. Because when you up this number, again, you're gonna increase the
distance between cards which should make the cards harder. Now, for example, if I
was at my Stats section and this said 77.9%, or
let's say something crazy like 65% or something like that then I would wanna make the
time in between cards shorter, because that means I'm answering
a way too many cards wrong and it's too hard and
my cumulative reviews are gonna go away too big. So what I would do then is I'll again go to my settings here on the right, go to Options, go to
Reviews and lower this. So I might lower it to 80% or 75%. And that would make the distance
between my cards decrease. So now I would be
studying if, for example, I had a card that was two days, If I changed this to 50% then I would get that card
in a day instead of two days. But as of now the Anki
algorithm is working pretty well for me, so I just leave it at 100&. Tip number seven is
learn keyboard shortcuts. So this is one I use all the time, and this isn't necessarily
an Anki keyboard shortcut. Let's say, let's go back to the
same card like in sclerosus. If that still wasn't
enough information for me and I needed a little bit more, what I could do is go to AMBOSS here, search my lichen sclerosus. And the key bind here we're gonna do is Command + Shift + 4. And what that does is it makes
you able to drag and drop an area of the screen to screenshot. So I might drag and drop over
this nice AMBOSS section, swipe to my Anki to AMBOSS place and place that right in the lecture notes. That way when I go over the card, I can see this extra bit of information. I think that's probably my
most used key bind for Anki even though it's not really a key bind. Other key binds that I use are if I'm studying
and I wanna edit a card all I can do E, that's edit. Another thing key bind which
I think everyone knows, is that if you hit the space
bar, it goes to the next card, and if you hit the space bar
again, it's selects, good. Another key bind which I use all the time are the numbers 1,2,3,4. So if you hit 1, it's Again, if you hit 2, it's Hard, if you hit 3, it's Good, and if you hIT 4, it's Easy. Sometimes also I'll just be
smashing the space bar so fast, sometimes I do it without
even looking like this 'cause it's just me and it are
just connected at this point. But sometimes I'll just
smash it and realize, Oh, it wasn't a good card. Another key bind you use Command + Z, I'm sure people know that, but that goes back to the past card. And then if you wanna browse, it's just B. And then in the Browse there's really only two
key bindings that I use. If I'm learning a new deck or a new card, I would just do Command
+ A and then Command + J to suspend and unsuspend cards. So Command + A selects all the cards and then Command + J would suspend a card. You can see that yellow highlight which means it's suspended. Okay, let's talk about creating cards. So the first tip I have for creating cards is create fewer cards. The AnKing and there are amazing
other resources out there that are edited over
and over and over again by literally teams of people. Now, who do you think is
gonna make better cards, you or the people that have teams of people working for
them to make the cards? Now I know there is the argument that making your own cards helps you to remember that information longer. But really if you do that you will just get lost in the sauce. You can't keep up making
your own cards forever. I'm a second year medical student now and I know my friends from last year that were making their own cards are now pretty much all
using a pre-made deck. But if you really need, if you have the need
to make your own cards, I'll give you a few tips
for making better cards. And I do make my own cards occasionally, and I make my own cards when I wanna study an incorrect question. So if you go to my deck here, you'll see there's a bunch of this junk but the only times I add my own cards are, this is just a Qbank. So this is where I add cards that are my own personal
cards that I've done wrong. And the only real way I
add these cards is that you makes sure you go to the top left here and make sure you get
a Cloze-AnKingMaster, that is the best kind of deck. That way you'll have
these nice little things to make the card and make sure
you're under the right deck, otherwise you will lose
your deck of cards. Some rules to make cards is that I would use Cloze deletion. So if you're tryna learn
two plus two equals four, you want to basically use Cloze deletions. So how that works, you
type in the question, and then you'll highlight it, and then hit this little parenthesis here. And then what I like to do
is I like to also highlight the answer and hit the parenthesis here. That way, you create, as you can see there's a
c1, that means one card, and then if you see two, two cards. That way there'll be a card that says two plus blank equals four. And then there'll be
another card that says two plus two equals blank. So as a rule of thumb, keep your cards short
and use Cloze deletions. Another thing is when you're
making your own cards, try and link to external resources. Again, the AnKing already
has this covered amazingly, because there are First Aid
and other things under that, but if you're learning something
that you don't see enough of third-party resources for, Google it, Command + Shift + 4 and just place it in the lecture section
or the extra content. This way you get a bigger
picture of what's going on because I'm kind of starting to see it now that if you just focus
on the individual details from every section and you
don't make it make sense in your mind, you will
forget that information. And the last tip I have for everyone is just to make it pretty, make it pretty. Look how pretty this
is, look how nice it is. And the important thing that I also do is when you actually study the deck, I don't like to have my background under the study deck section because I find it distracting
under the individual cards. But when I first go into
studying for the day I like to see this nice background. So in order to do this you need to download the
customized background add-on and I will link to a video from the AnKing on how to actually set
up and install this. But I found that video
a little bit complicated kind of like a couple other of his videos which is why I make these
videos in the first place. So if you guys wanna see maybe a video that's a more basic
tutorial on how to actually make your background nice and
pretty and change these colors and get this thing down
here looking really nice, just let me know and I'll
make that in a separate video. But yeah, that's it. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you on the next one.
