Anki Essentials: the Complete Guide to Remembering Anything with Anki

Original: Anki Essentials

Motivation

‘Anki’ is, so far, my favorite app for spaced-repetition memorization. I’ve used it for 3 years straight, almost every single day, both on laptop and my purchased iPhone app. It’s the best time investment I’ve made in my knowledge life. Wondered a million times before: what if I had it in college, life would be insanely easy…. ;)
Although a big fan, there are many corners of the software I still don’t know about, and ‘Anki Essentials’ came to rescue.

User guide rather than App documentation

This 120 pages long pdf is by far the best comprehensive user guide I’ve found for Anki. We sure get a decent document for the app itself, well maintained here. However it doesn’t serve the purpose for explaining the power of Anki to a beginner. And I think this is where the best value comes. As a frequent user, I also find various tips about making Notes and Cards; as well as various ideas about getting Anki study sessions more effective.

Background and ‘the 20 rules’

A lot of pitfalls for using flash cards boil down to poorly made notes. As for me, the biggest take-home points are:

• Customize the notes at the sweet spot, Anki decks are extensions of building personal knowledge.
• Follow the best practices in authoring flash cards, best resource on Internet is ‘the 20 rules’ developed in the 90s.

Follow-up

Currently experimenting with image cloze deletion notes making. Hopefully this will help in understanding design patterns and learning patter diagrams.