I’ve been using Anki for the past few months, and recommend it for learning things. It’s also a good way of making use of a daily commute.
The Lesswrong Wiki has pointers to some of the places it’s been discussed here.
As a quick summary:
Make your cards super easy (the answers should be a single word as much as possible, and you should be able to answer it very quickly)
Use cloze deletion; eg if you want to learn “As part of the reward pathway, dopamine is manufactured in nerve cell bodies located within the ventral tegmental area and is released in the nucleus accumbens and the prefrontal cortex.”, you might make cards with:
“As part of the ???? pathway, dopamine is manufactured in nerve cell bodies located within the ventral tegmental area”
reward
“As part of the reward pathway, dopamine is manufactured in ???? located within the ventral tegmental area”
nerve cell bodies
“As part of the reward pathway, dopamine is manufactured in nerve cell bodies located within the ?????”
ventral tegmental area
Create Anki cards yourself, don’t use pre-made decks
Enter stuff in Anki once you have a basic understanding (i.e. after reading about it or having a lecture etc. - not directly entering facts witout processing them)
Make cards that ask for pretty much the same information several times (definition of a concept, what’s the concept of this definition, such-and such is an example of which concept, etc.)
Review in little sessions dispersed through the day
Delete stuff if it feels useless / too difficult. If it’s too hard, best to delete it and make several easier cards.
I’ve been using Anki for the past few months, and recommend it for learning things. It’s also a good way of making use of a daily commute.
The Lesswrong Wiki has pointers to some of the places it’s been discussed here.
As a quick summary:
Make your cards super easy (the answers should be a single word as much as possible, and you should be able to answer it very quickly)
Use cloze deletion; eg if you want to learn “As part of the reward pathway, dopamine is manufactured in nerve cell bodies located within the ventral tegmental area and is released in the nucleus accumbens and the prefrontal cortex.”, you might make cards with:
“As part of the ???? pathway, dopamine is manufactured in nerve cell bodies located within the ventral tegmental area” reward
“As part of the reward pathway, dopamine is manufactured in ???? located within the ventral tegmental area” nerve cell bodies
“As part of the reward pathway, dopamine is manufactured in nerve cell bodies located within the ?????” ventral tegmental area
Create Anki cards yourself, don’t use pre-made decks
Enter stuff in Anki once you have a basic understanding (i.e. after reading about it or having a lecture etc. - not directly entering facts witout processing them)
Make cards that ask for pretty much the same information several times (definition of a concept, what’s the concept of this definition, such-and such is an example of which concept, etc.)
Review in little sessions dispersed through the day
Delete stuff if it feels useless / too difficult. If it’s too hard, best to delete it and make several easier cards.