This is the first article in a series of posts about Anki, a spaced learning system to improve users’ long term memory. The next article in this series will cover the theoretical background of spaced learning, and the final article will concentrate on best practices using Anki.
I have been using Anki software for years to learn information that is important for me to remember for a long time. Such information can be defined very broadly and can include almost anything, from a penny test to random forest and The Starry Night.
I have almost ten thousand individual pieces of information in Anki and review them daily in about half an hour. I often hear comments like “There is no way you can review this amount of information daily!”, so let me explain.
Anki is a system to store flashcards, where individual cards are scheduled for review at various intervals determined by an algorithm. The user reads a question on one side of the flash card and answers to herself. She then compares her answer to the correct answer displayed on the back of the card. If she answers the card correctly, the card will be offered for review in ever-increasing intervals. If she misses the question, the card is scheduled the next day to restart the learning cycle. Cards that the user has answered correctly many times are called mature cards and can be scheduled again after a year or more. Because each day the user reviews just a subset of the information contained on all her flashcards, all scheduled cards can be reviewed daily in 30 minutes or so.
Let’s look at how one card might look. Let’s assume I want to remember how The Starry Night painting by Vincent van Gogh looks. Here are screenshots of both sides of the card.
Similar questions can be created to inquire about the painter and the title of the painting. Indeed, questions can be created about anything.
To recap what I covered today. If you want to remember something, no longer do you need to rely just on your memory. You can selectively choose what to remember. For a modest investment of 30 minutes or so daily, you can remember it for decades.