Ask HN: Better way to create Anki cards?
Hello HN, i've been trying to use spaced repetition to help with my studies but creating cards in anki is a pain, do you have a better way to create cards? ( or an anki alternative that makes this easier? )
Make your Anki cards one at a time. Quality over quantity.
It's very easy to add 10,000 words and translations/definitions into Anki using import tools and scripts. If this works for you, great! But I often see people do this and then a month later feel totally crushed by hundreds of reviews information completely out of context.
Instead, try studying and only make a card when you have an "Aha!" moment. "Oh, that's what that word means" or "Ahh, I see how the past tense works". Ideally, cards should feel a little bit too easy when you make them. It should feel like you're never going to forget the new word that came up 20 times in this chapter of your textbook. Of course, after a week or so your memory will be a bit more fuzzy and the Anki card will be a helpful reminder to prevent forgetting.
A bonus of this method is that now doing Anki reviews is like remembering all your best hits and moments you were really clever. It's the complete opposite of a grind.
For example, when I was learning about DIY Bio, one of my cards might look like:
Front: "What allows plants and algae to photosynthesise sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into energy?"
Back: "chloroplasts"
My memory isn't great and I think rewording what you've read helps in the process.
If it's a matter of creating cards one by one, instead of in bulk, I would argue that's a feature rather than a bug. Consider it extra study time, especially as creating a good card makes you think about the topic more.
Otherwise, card types/templates are your friend.
It supports curl, python, javascript, etc to add cards and supports an incredible amount of actions to interact with Anki.
Example: curl localhost:8765 -X POST -d '{"action": "deckNames", "version": 6}'
I setup a crude "GUI" in Jupyter Notebook to create and manage my decks.
I use this approach in my Spotify + Anki app, described here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Anki/comments/g0zgyc/spotify_anki_l...
I agree with laurieg[0] and dustincoates[1], there is value in creating your cards one at a time, because then you initially learn the card as it goes in, and you are using the system to help retain it in the long term. Their comments should be read carefully and the points considered.
But I also use a Spaced Repetition (SR) system to memorise things, and sometimes there's value in simply dumping things in "in bulk", learning them when first presented, and trusting the system. When I first had need of a SR system I needed it quickly, and I didn't have 'net access, so I wrote my own. My usage is perhaps idiosyncratic, but I can see why one would want to install cards en masse.
Good luck with your studies.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32407331, in which they say: "Make your Anki cards one at a time. Quality over quantity."
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32398200, in which they say: "Consider it extra study time, especially as creating a good card makes you think about the topic more."
https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/
Though, in my experience using both Anki with pre-made and custom cards, the custom ones tend to promote better retention and cover individual knowledge gaps more thoroughly and efficiently.
I will warn you - it's not very clean code and mostly based on scripts I'd found on GitHub. It's something I threw together over a summer because I needed to learn a lot of Swedish words very quickly, and my usual Anki-adding methods were too slow. Worked out well, but I do keep meaning to come back to it and make it a proper bit of software...
It's similar to how taking notes during a lecture help you remember better, even if you never review the notes again.
Fluent Forever[1] teaches an effective method for maximizing the benefits of SRS. It specifically targets foreign language learning, but the concepts can be applied to whatever you want to learn.
[1]: https://www.nateliason.com/notes/fluent-forever-gabriel-wein...
I wonder based on your study environment (if it's web based) if you could find a similar plugin that's more general purpose or develop one yourself.
If you prepare a file which looks like this:
front;back
front;back
front;back
...
Actually, I saved the list of flashcard makers from this article: https://custom-writing.org/blog/how-to-make-and-study-flashc...