Skip to content

How to Make Good Anki Cards

Haikal
Haikal
1 min read

Anki is a very effective method of learning as it is based on the two pillars of effective learning; Active Recall and Spaced Repetition. With that being said, making your own Anki cards can be a bit of a challenge at times.

Bad Anki cards can frustrate you over the long run, and make it harder for you to remember the context of the information.

Here are some ways to make better Anki cards.

  • Avoid making cards at first: try using pre-made cards, so that you get a feel of what a good card would look like.
  • When making cards, remember this one rule: K.I.S.S : Keep it Simple Stupid!
  • Don’t make cards for all information. Try doing high yield cards first, then add on. This is why I recommend using pre-made cards first, as they are very high yield, then from there, you can add on by yourself after mastering the basics well.
  • If you want to make a card for a specific piece for info, ask yourself these 3 questions:
  1. Is it an examinable fact?
  2. Do you need to memorise it?
  3. Can I rely on understanding alone to remember this?
  • Avoid lists, wherever possible.
  • When making cloze for lists, you should make sure that if you put everything as different clozes, each cloze doesn’t give a clue to the answer. Sometimes it’s better for you to memorise the whole thing.
  • Just start doing Anki. You’ll get better at using it as you go along.
  • Don’t be afraid to delete or edit a card if you feel that it is a bad card.
  • Use images to provide context, add lecture slides, memes, whatever resource you can use to make the cards personalised and more fun to review, and more context

You can also read more here.

AnkiMedical School

Comments


Related Posts

Members Public

To think better, read old books

If you want to think better, read old books. Haruki Murakami explains this best in “Norwegian Wood”: If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. The Cultural Tutor, who went from flipping burgers in McDonald’s to Twitter

Members Public

Plus Minus Next Journaling in Roam Research: An Easy Method for Weekly Review

One of the best habits I picked up recently is doing a weekly review. I'd feel lost and agitated whenever I miss doing it. Instead, doing one primes me for the next week and allows me to learn from my mistakes and successes in the previous week. Everyone knows that

Members Public

How I (used to) publish daily

How does Seth Godin write a blog post every day? That's a question I've been trying to answer for quite some time now. I'm well aware that publishing daily is a good habit for newbie writers. William Zinsser had something to say about this in his book On Writing Well: