A (biased..

) guide to ANKI- by Nick Flint (​​but really based on a

lot of stuff other people told me​)
Important for starters
1. Make sure you have Anki 2.0 (not 2.1!)
2. https://www.reddit.com/r/medicalschoolanki/
a. on the far right side there down a little ways download (the third one has to be
downloaded to Anki last)

b.
c. Once they’re downloaded, suspend all of them.
3. Make your own Foundations deck. Use this for all the cards you make yourself during
foundations.
a. As you’re making cards do searches for zanki cards that fit curriculum and
unsuspend them (just leave them in the zanki deck).
4. ALWAYS (almost) make ​“cloze” cards ​(the cloze 88141 template is my favorite).​ Use the
“…” button to add a cloze deletion or ​cmd/ctrl+shift+C ​(just memorize the shortcut,
you’ll use it) ​*There’s an add-on that will change your shortcut to cmd+space if you’d prefer that
a. {{c1:: card stuff}} the number on the cloze deletion is the card. You can change
the numbers so that all the deletions are each their own card or grouped.
b. {{c1:: card stuff::​hint​​}} adding a “::hint” will display the “hint” in the card. So for
example your card could be “cystic fibrosis is due to a defect in
{{c1::CFTR::channel}}” and it would show up as “cystic fibrosis is due to a defect
in ​[channel]​”
5. HOW TO MAKE GOOD CARDS:
a. I don’t claim to be good at this, but use Zanki cards as a reference. Stuff is
bolded, italicized and there is always pictures and descriptions in the Extra
section to help you get the big picture.
b. Use the Extra section to help with the ​BIG picture!
6. Pro tips:
a. Hit “e” while doing a flashcard to edit it.
b. Hit cmd/ctrl+z to go back to a previous card
c. Most shortcuts will show up if you hover over the button
7. DO the cards every day! If you don’t it won’t work!
The nitty-gritty of the settings

●
o Don’t change the ​timebox time limit​​. Set learn ahead limit to whatever you
want- essentially it just allows anki to let you see cards that are due in 1-10 min.
if your learn ahead limit is 10 min. ​I recommend 0 so you space your cards out.
o Don’t change the load balancer settings in preferences if you are using it.

●
o The steps​​ are “first step (space) second step.” You can add more than that if you
want (see my recommendations below). The way this works is that if you mess
up or hit the “again” button, it reverts to the first step. If you say “good” on a
new card, it goes to the second step.
▪ Once it passes through the 2 steps (or however many you have) it is no
longer considered a “new card.”
▪ Anki has a default “starting ease.” This is what the interval is multiplied
by every time you say “good.” If you say “hard” or “easy” it will decrease
 or increase the ease of the card. “again” decreases the ease and basically
starts the process over. NOTE: while the card is “new” you won’t be
penalized for getting it wrong
▪ The ​graduating interval​​ is what interval the cards will go to AFTER they
have finished the steps. (as you can see on my image, the load balancer
lets you give this some freedom to even out how many are due each day)
▪ My Recommendations: If you like to see the new cards twice the first day
do something like “15 60” and set graduating interval to 1. If you don’t
like to see the new cards twice the first day (like me) do my settings
above. (I prefer this because I make the cards and if I want to do the new
cards twice I just hit “again” and won’t be penalized. I have a separate
setting for Zanki cards that I didn’t make so I see them twice the first day)
▪ I don’t have ​bury related new cards​​ until next day checked because I like
to see every card the first day, but I do have it checked on the review tab
(see below)

●
o Set reviews to 9999. I increased my easy bonus a little and put my max interval
at 6 months(this can be adjusted as step 1 time gets closer).

●
o Here are my settings for the Lapses. You can adjust this as you’d like but I’d
recommend setting it to “tag only” You could set the new interval to anywhere
between 0 and 90% (I wouldn’t go higher than that)
Must-have add-ons

● Image Occlusion Enhanced​​- allows you to put blocks on pictures and make like 10 cards
in one (great for anatomy). Copy an image to the clipboard and then click on the
far right when adding a card
o I recommend almost always using the “hide all, reveal one”
● More Overview Stats 2​​- lets you see more stats
● Quick reschedule in reviewer​​- when you’re doing your cards, hit “r” and it will let you
manually decide how many days before you see that card again
● Advanced Browser​​- lets you organize cards by date created. (super nice for finding
cards you made that day and want to edit) Right click the top bar in the browser and it
will let you add fields
● Pop up Dictionary-​​ you click a word and it’ll bring up all other cards you have with that
card. Or you can highlight a phrase and Cmd+shift+D.
o https://medshamim.com/med/must-have-anki-add-ons
Cool add-ons (that I have)
● Review heatmap-​​ fun thing that shows up on the bottom of the main screen and shows
you how many reviews you’ve done each day or how many you’ll have in the future
● Night mode-​​makes it all black, nice on the eyes *​see my instructions on how to make
Zanki cards work with this
● Reset card scheduling-​​ lets you reset the schedule on a card (or multiple cards). In the
browser select the card, then edit​→​reschedule card. Great for cards you change or
cards from someone else that didn’t export them and uncheck the “keep schedule
information” box
● Right hand reviews with jkl;​​- makes jkl; the same as 1234 so you can just use one hand
on those 4 keys and the space bar
● Put all due learning cards first​​- this puts the cards you’re learning before ones that
you’ve had for a while. I personally prefer to have it get easier as I go instead of harder
so I like this *​this doesn’t work on the app version
● Cloze deletion single card​​- instead of each new cloze deletion being the next number,
they will all be c1 (they can still be changed)
● Load balancer-​​ It spreads cards out just a little bit so that you don’t have 350 cards due
one day and 50 cards due the next day. It preferentially moves the cards that are
“easier.” UPDATE: This does not work if you’re using the ipad or phone version, just
computer. I’ve stopped using it for now, but will probably put it back on as I get more
cards.
o One thing I don’t like about this is that your buttons will not necessarily match
what the actual interval will be next to. So your button could say “1 day” but
you’re actually on a “5 day interval”
● Expand and collapse decks-​​drag and drop to make decks in stacks instead of manually
adding “::” in the deck name to create folders
● Hierarchical tags​​-allows you to make tags within tags (for example, you could make a
“cell bio” tag and then make a tag with the date of each lecture
 ● Frozen fields​​-lets you “freeze” a field so that you can make multiple cards that all have
the same thing (great for cards that all have to do with the same picture and you want it
attached to each card)
Good resources
● https://www.medschoolanki.com/
● https://www.reddit.com/r/medicalschoolanki/
o This also has a medical Spanish deck for those that speak Spanish. I found a
Medical Chinese deck and I’m sure there are other languages out there if you
search for them

How to change Zanki cards to work with Night mode

● pretend like you’re adding a new card and find note type “cloze-88141.” On the top left
click the box “Cards…” In the bottom left box find the type “color:Navy” and change it
to “color:Magenta”

How to make Cloze notes with multiple c1 deletions that open 1 by 1

1) Select the corresponding 'Cloze' card in the 'Browser' window.
2) Click 'Cards ...' to go to the 'Card Type' editor.
3) Insert the script at the end of 'Back Template' section.

<script>
var clozes = document.getElementsByClassName("cloze");
var clr = window.getComputedStyle(clozes[0]).color;
var bg = window.getComputedStyle(clozes[0]).background;
for (i=1; i<clozes.length; ++i) {
clozes[i].style.background = clr;
clozes[i].onclick = function() {this.style.background=bg ;}
}
</script>

How I spread ideas/cards out over the week (without load balancer)
● I have a “New” deck with multiple subdecks and I rename the subdecks for each class
I’m making cards for (i.e. “Thursday’s TBL”). I then move some of the cards over into
my Foundations deck each day so the ideas are spread out over a couple days.
● I also will use the reschedule add-on to make some cards come back in 1 day and some
in 2.
● I do not always do all the new cards I unlock from Zanki.

How to find cards in Zanki

● 1. Organize by ​date created​ 2. Search for an idea (i.e. krebs cycle) 3. click a card that is
relevant 4. delete the search option and hit enter.
○ Zanki made his cards in a logical order. If you find one relevant card, there are
likely many other relevant ones created at the same time
● Use the tags. Searching within decks can be helpful, but the tags narrow even further
● Useful searching cues​​ you can use: “is:new -is:suspended” will find everything that is
new and ​not​ suspended
 ○ This can be used with many other terms such as is:buried, is:suspended
○ You can search for untagged things with tag:none
○ Searching m ​ ucus glands​ will find anything with either of those words, while
searching ​“mucus glands”​ will find that exact phrase
○ Added:1​ are cards added today. ​Added:7​ are cards added in the last week
○ Rated:1​ is cards answered today. ​Rated:7:1​ are cards answered ”again” (the 1
option) in the last 7 days.
● You can click one term in the browser then cmd/ctrl click another to search ​both

*If you are wanting to start using anki/Zanki but haven’t been, I am happy to share my
foundations deck with you as well as my Zanki deck with all the cards I have unlocked up to
this point*

How the anki algorithm works:

● each card has a ​starting ease​​ (250%)
● Once a card has passed the learning ​steps​​, it now has 250% ease. The last step is
multiplied by 250% (i.e. 1 day*250%=the card will come back in 2-3 days)
o Anki allows a little bit of “fuzz” to mix cards that are related
● Once a card is no longer “learning”, the following occurs
o Again-card comes back according to the current interval*“new interval%”
settings in the lapses tab . Ease is decreased by 20%
o Hard-1.2*current interval. Ease decreases 15%
o Good-ease*current interval
o Easy-ease*current interval*easy bonus. Ease increases 15%
● *​in the review tab, there is a setting for​ interval modifier.​ Normally everything is
multiplied by this as well, but the default is 100% so it doesn’t do anything. Adjusting
this will make ALL of the card’s intervals shorter or longer. The s​ tarting ease​ is also
changeable