Scheduling - General

Scheduling
1

I’ve used Anki for a few months but I don’t think I’m using it to the fullest capacity for my studying and I’d like to fix that.

  1. I’m in PA school and I know that spaced repetition and active recall are basically the only way I can study now. However, I make cards and go through them but I think that I’ve used the hard feature too much and I think sometimes I’m in ease hell and I see some cards way too often. I don’t understand how the algorithm works at all and I just don’t know how to get the best use out of the spaced repetition for each of my decks.
  • I don’t know how many cards I should be looking at per night. I make ~ 150-200 per lecture [some are easier questions but it’s a lot of material either way] and sometimes I can’t review them all per day when I’m trying to make them same day as well. So I’m not sure how to utilize anki fully here to help with that.
  • Do I/can I change the settings to help with ^^^ that?
  1. I have a huge deck for the PANCE prep guide and I want to review the topics I’ve already learned a very small increment at a time [because I’m still in didactic and obviously continuing to learn new block material - but I want to make sure I don’t forget all of the stuff I should know]. I REALLY need advice on this one.
  • I want to know what is the best way to study this massive deck [it has like 8,000 cards in it] over the next year without doing an extra 200 cards per night [because again I’m still in didactic so I’m also having to review the new cards I’m making for my lectures day to day etc].
  • What should I use as the best settings to study these cards in smaller intervals [so like only seeing ~ 45-50 cards per day in the PANCE review deck I have?]

Basically I don’t know how to fully use Anki’s algorithm to effectively help me study besides knowing how to make cards. If anyone has advice please send help :).

2

I don’t mean to sound blithe, but the solution to that seems clear – learn how the algorithm works. Since you don’t mention otherwise, I assume you’re using the default SM-2 algorithm. This explains what happens for each grading button for cards in the Learn and Review states. [You can find a more specific explanation of the algorithm in the FAQ.]

That’s great that you’re making your own cards, but 200 seems like a lot for a single lecture. If that works for you, keep doing it – but it sounds like you might be asking how to make more efficient cards. The 20 Rules can help you with that.

When you’re working on a long timeline like that, some simple arithmetic should tell you how fast you need to introduce the cards. Introducing 25-30 cards per day would take about 10 months, leaving you 2 months left at the end to continue reviewing and doing focused study on topics.