Anki Best Practices
- Use cloze questions.
- Include images in both questions and answers.
- Provide personal context will help you with memorizing (like where your first learned it, examples from your life etc).
- Use screenshots if you don’t want to spend time formulas and code snippets.
- Avoid transparent backgrounds in case you switch between dark/light modes or different clients (Desktop/iOS/Android etc).
- Avoid having lists as answers.
- You can add more details and context in the answer part to refresh your memory on a topic.
- Refactor low-quality questions regurarly. I use the star/mark function to identify a poor card, and then do bulk edits maybe once a month to save time.
- You can use Anki to remember names and faces.
- Remember the Feynman technique: pretend that you have to teach the subject or concept to a complete beginner.
- Understand first, the memorize. Begin with the basics. Study -> Review -> Ankify.
- Don’t memorize random facts without a reason for doing so. Ask yourself why. Is this knowledge worth 5 minutes of your life? If yes, ankify.
- Add cards for very basic and easy facts, due to the attractive cost/reward ratio of doing so.
- Minimum information principle (keep it simple): Break down into simplest possible, standalone questions (basic building blocks of knowledge).
- Make the question as short as possible. This will make reviewing the question faster, and also help you with recalling the answer.
- Make the answer as short as possible. This obviously makes the answer easier to memorize.
- Inkludera källor, datum, markera osäkerhet.
- To avoid ambiguity, you can mark your questions with a topic like geography, French, music, etc.