How to Use Anki for Beginners!

Summary

Alec Palmerton presents a beginner’s guide to setting up Anki, creating useful flashcards, and reviewing them consistently. His central advice is to use Anki for active recall and connected understanding—not merely to click through cards or memorize long answers word for word.

1. Set Up Anki

• Download Anki from apps.ankiweb.net and install the version for your operating system.
• Palmerton recommends starting with the desktop app, which he finds convenient for creating and reviewing cards. Phone and web versions are also available.
• Anki starts with a Default deck, which is fine to use.

2. Choose a Deck Organization

You can keep everything in one deck or divide cards into subject decks, such as cardiology, respiratory, and renal.

• One large deck: Reviews from different subjects are mixed together, which can make practice more varied. Tags can help identify topics, though cards are not separated into subject decks.
• Subject decks or subdecks: These make it easier to organize, find, and share topic-specific cards. If reviewed in sequence, however, cards may appear grouped by subject rather than mixed.
• Palmerton personally prefers using few subdecks for his own studying, but says subdecks can be useful when sharing organized collections.

3. Create Effective Cards

• Select a card type. Palmerton prefers Basic cards, with an optional reverse card when information is useful in both directions.
• Keep prompts short and specific. He demonstrates using a hyphen to make the topic and question clear—for example, “Epidural hematoma – presentation.” Shorter prompts save time when reviewing many cards.
• Consider making reverse cards when recall in both directions matters. For example, one card can ask for the capital of France, while its reverse asks which city is the capital.
• Connect related facts where possible. Rather than making separate cards for a condition’s pathophysiology and presentation, try asking how the pathophysiology explains the presentation. This can reduce the number of cards and support deeper understanding.
• Focus on the main idea and meaningful relationships rather than making every card a long list of details. If this approach feels overwhelming at first, begin with straightforward cards and build up.

As an example, Palmerton uses an epidural hematoma card that links arterial bleeding from the middle meningeal artery with the typical sequence of loss of consciousness, a lucid interval, and rapid deterioration. He offers part of this explanation as his own proposed reasoning, not as a definitive explanation.

4. Review Cards Actively

1. Open the relevant deck and select Study Now.
2. Read the prompt and try to answer from memory—aloud or silently—before revealing the answer.
3. Reveal the answer and judge whether you understood the core idea.
4. Choose a rating:
   • Again: You did not know the material well; the card will return sooner. For a card reviewed before, this can reset its interval.
   • Hard: You knew it, but found it difficult; it returns sooner than a Good card.
   • Good: The usual choice and Palmerton’s recommended rating for most reviews.
   • Easy: For material you found especially easy; Palmerton says he uses this less often.
5. Avoid both extremes: demanding perfect word-for-word recall can create unnecessary repetition, while clicking through without genuinely testing yourself undermines active recall. If you understand the general idea, Palmerton suggests rating it Good.
6. Focus on whether you know the concept and its connections. If you already understand the answer, you may not need to reread every line on the back.

5. Review Consistently

• Finish the cards due that day and look for Anki’s “Congratulations, you’ve now finished this deck for now” message. Palmerton says completing scheduled reviews is important for the spaced-repetition system to work as intended.
• Make reviews a daily habit. He argues that deciding each day whether to skip creates extra friction, so setting a firm expectation can help.
• If an unusually busy day is coming, plan ahead and study in advance to reduce the workload that day.

Speakers and Sources Featured

• Alec Palmerton — narrator and instructor.
• First Aid — cited as the source for the medical example about epidural hematoma.
• Anki — the flashcard and spaced-repetition software demonstrated in the video.