How To Use Anki Like A Pro [Full Step-By-Step Walkthrough]

Guys, welcome to the channel. In today's video, we're going to do a

full

walkthrough

on Anki, exactly how to use it. I will also share with you a unique method that I use specifically to improve my grades, my retention, and at the same time decrease my time. Come into this guys, welcome in case you are new to this channel. My name is lax, an internal medicine doctor and resident in training. I'm really excited to make this video because Anki was one of my favorite tools to use as a medical student. but it's also one of the things I still use now as a doctor.

Now I know there are many of you watching this video who may be in medical school on your medical journey or are just trying to use Anki for your particular academic or learning purposes, so depending on how familiar you are with the platform, Feel free to check out some of the links below to the various chapters of the video so you can find the parts that are most important to you and if you enjoy this video, I've made tons of videos about Anki and how I use it as a medical student throughout this channel and those will also be linked below as well as a playlist so first let's quickly talk about exactly what Anki is.

Now there are many flash cards. systems that exist, but the way I would define

anki

is that it is a smart flash card system designed around spatial repetition. You may be familiar with other popular flashcard systems like quizlet which are awesome and I definitely used them back in my college days so the beauty of

anki

is that as you make your flashcards it starts to recognize what topics you are good at , what subjects you are average in and what subjects you are excellent in, and in the future, every time you review your cards, it is You will have a higher frequency of those garbage topics, the things that you are really weak in, that they will show you first and, intermittently, they will be spread over the topics of your average and even less so on the topics that interest you. you're good and overall it becomes a fantastic, free resource that you can use to enhance your active learning depending on whether you're on your medical path, trying to learn a class for college, or trying to do it for e.g. , learn a new language, fits all those molds perfectly, so next let's talk about how to set up anki.

Now the beauty of anki is that it's free and you can use it on both PC and Mac and for the demos in this video. We'll be doing this on a PC, so for all you Mac lovers, it's essentially the same. They can also use it on their Android or iOS phone. Now the Android version of the app is absolutely free and unfortunately for iOS it costs a little bit, but it's worth it because you can sync your multiple devices and have your cards on your computer and then immediately on your phone, so for the purposes of this video I'm just going to do a demo on my laptop so The first thing you're going to do is go to the anki website and I'll link it below as well and again it's free so you can go ahead and click download and then find the version that best suits you and I already have it downloaded, but as soon as you do it on your desktop, you will see the Anki icon on the desktop and you will click on it the first time, it will basically ask you to create a username and a profile.

This is basically so that your email can be linked to all the flashcards you create, so that in case you try to open it on your phone, your iPad, or any other device, you can easily sync it from that free account you created now on Additionally, when you create Anki, it will give you the option to create a profile. Now most people only have one profile, so it's like your entire portfolio of flashcards. You can also get a lot ahead with this, so for example if you're studying for a board exam, like if you're studying for your mcat when you're in medical school trying to get into medical school and you can have a single profile for all mcat related flashcards and then you can have a profile just for your college classes or if you are studying in medical college you can have just one for your lectures and then a few for your board exams which you are setting On the side so you can see, I have several different profiles.

Profiles I have created just for demos so one of them is the first

step

academy so in case you are studying for the first

step

they will also be linked below but we can go ahead and log in now Once we're done setting up Anki, we can go ahead and start creating our own flash cards. When you first open Anki, obviously there won't be anything there, but you guys can already start to see the potential of what this will look like when I started using Anki for quite a while and later in this video we'll talk about how to create your own flashcards. , as well as how to use flashcards that other people have already made and before we get into the flashcards, I want to talk about deck building because This can give you an idea of ​​how to structure your flashcards and also give you an idea of ​​the power that monkey has.

For example, let's say you're about to study for your cardiology block and I already have one, so I'm just going to say cardiology class, so this can be a platform where you can basically put all your topics related to cardiology. cardiology, so that's where you're learning the class right now, but let's say instead you want to get a little more macular and you want to go ahead and break it down based on lectures, which is what I recommend and you can say the first lecture , say you're learning about electrocardiographs that day, the second lecture let's say you're learning about congestive heart failure or heart failure, now the nice thing is what you can do is essentially go ahead and move that into your perspective, so now , as you can see in the cardiology class, the deck that I created, I have all my lectures and then as I continue to do more classes, I can move forward. and add it and if I wanted to I can do flashcards of the whole cardiology block or specifically the electrode depending on how I wanted to review so the idea of ​​having these kind of decks and then mini decks and then mini mini decks You have a lot of control about how you want to review your material, but now let's go ahead and talk about the fun, which is how to create flashcards, so we'll go ahead and break down some of the most common types. of flashcards and gives you an idea of ​​what kind of things you can do with anki and then later in the video I'll also share with you some of the advanced techniques that you should use to ideally increase your retention while decreasing your time.

The first thing we're going to go ahead and do is create an Anki tutorial for this YouTube video and here's the deck that I have, so right now I don't have flashcards, but what you can do is go ahead and click. add and then you can go ahead and click on the different types of flash cards. This may seem overwhelming, but the most basic flash card you can create is a basic flash card, that's what it's called, and it's a simple front and back with the question. that you would put along with the answer and I'm just going to ask question one because it recognizes that I already have a flash card like that so if I click add and I click close now when I'm in my own key deck I can click in studying and it will just ask me: you know that question and I need to know that the answer is answered and then you can play with the beauty of Anki, which is telling yourself that you know how well you know it. this information, so if I don't know the answer very well I can click "show it to me" again in a minute, if I know it pretty well I can say "show it to me in 10 minutes" and if it's something I can really master more than four days , so it's a good way to just press the button based on your immediate comfort level and then anki will do everything in the background, so that's one type of flashcard that you can create, but let's talk about some others.

The ones I like are the ability to create multiple cards with one effort, so some things you can do are a basic card and a reverse card and basically this is great for things like language translation or memorizing structures , so let's say, for example. you're trying to learn the language, you can have both the English version of the word and a translation in that respective language, so you can go ahead and have the English and then the translation, whatever language you're trying to learn and click add but now the cool thing is it actually added not just one card but two cards as you can see now I have three flash cards so the first one it's going to show me is the one I made but now I have English and then translation, but I also have English translation, so it's a good way to turn the cards when it doesn't really matter which side you see first, you can actually evaluate yourself interchangeably.

Now those are some of the most basic ones. Flashcards that you can create, but you can get really powerful with Anki, so this is where I started to geek out, but the next flashcard that I definitely recommend that you learn about and how to use it is the close function, so the bar nearby flash is Basically, imagine that you have a phrase or something long that you have to memorize within it to know that process a is equal to process b plus c. Let's say you have to memorize an equation, so what you can really do is say I'm going.

To go ahead and grab some of this Anki script that I actually created for this video, so I'm just going to copy it in there and let's say I wanted to memorize this part of the flash card for my respective class, you can just click. these three dots right here or press Ctrl Shift c uh c if you're doing this on a PC and then what it's going to go ahead and do is if I click and check that flash card, it's going to activate and then lock it. respective word and I have to memorize what went in there so in this case it was a smart flash card system and since I did it right I can go ahead and click on four days now again you can go even further with this so again If I go ahead and just paste that sentence.

What I can do is now I can choose the respective word that I wanted, but I can also add other things from that phrase. I also wanted to interrogate the beauty of creating multiple cards from one. sentence or a question, in case you wanted to memorize different things in one sentence but you wanted to have one card to test yourself on one part and another card to test you on another, that's cool too, so here I'll show you. In this example, if I click Show Answers, I'll just click so you can see this is flash card number one that I created and now I have another flash card that's quizzing me on the last part of what I clicked and finally I closed this closed function which is definitely a tongue twister.

One thing you can do as a little more advanced strategy is you can go ahead and do the same thing, but let's say you want to be interrogated. on both cards at the same time, then what you can actually do is instead of clicking c2 and c1, you can do both c and now when I see this card, it will force me to be asked. both pieces of information at the same time instead of just one, so if you have a really long chain of commands or if you have bullets and you want to memorize some of them together or all the bullets as part of on your flash card, you can just click c1 or on the same number and then that card will ask you about all of them.

Now, the last type of flashcard I want to show you is where Anki gets really cool, especially if you're trying to memorize. diagrams and figures and similar maps is the image occlusion tool, so the image occlusion tool basically gives you the function of blocking different things in a picture or a picture and then converting them into a flashcard. Now, this is a plugin, it's a free plugin. -on and let me quickly show you how to add this to your anki portfolio, so one thing you're going to do quickly is go ahead and Google anki image occlusion, so we'll just click on one of these for the example , so we're going to go here and we're going to show you the capability of what that plugin can do and then to install it all you have to do is just go down and find the number that I'm going to give you, so in this case it's here, so I'm just going to control it, copy it and go back to my anki and you can just click on tools and click on plugins and I already have this installed, but for all purposes, go ahead and click on get plugin and paste that code.

It will go ahead and download and install it and then all you have to do is restart your anki before you can do that. use the tool like thiswhich now let me show you exactly what the image occlusion tool can do and what kind of cool things you can do with it, especially if you're learning things like anatomy, so let's click add and we're going to click image. occlusion and click choose now, a lot of things can go here, but all you have to do is just click on this last button that says add image occlusion and then search for an image, so I have a heart image here and now , the beauty of It's essentially the default, is where all you have to do is just click on all the structures that you really need to know and you don't have to click on everything, so let's say in this situation I really didn't.

If you care about memorizing the septum, but everything else was fair game, then you can just quickly, in a matter of just a few seconds, click on everything that's good for this example and then you can essentially decide how you want this card to be presented. flash, if you want it to look like this and then it will basically ask you about one thing. at a time, but the rest are still blocked or you want everything exposed except the only information you need to know, so I'll just say that you know hide one, guess one, which means you can show the rest of them it doesn't really matter , you can play with them however you want, but as you can see, I've added 11 cards now in a matter of a few seconds, so if I go ahead and click show answer, then this is something like this. the beauty of the occlusion of the image will ask me to basically say what the structure is.

I hope it's the right atrium, here we go, otherwise it basically fails, but now you can go ahead and keep clicking and it will ask you. Now there is a different structure, the first time you create your flashcard, it will ask you based on the order that you created them, but over time what you will find is that, as you say, this topic is easy and this topic is difficult. Exchange, know the order of them and mix them for a natural learning process. That's basically how to create your own flashcards now, before we get into some advanced strategies, I just want to quickly talk about how to use work that other people have done. essentially to get your learning done, so let's say you're trying to learn for a board exam or a language and you don't really want to make your own flashcards, you just want to take the hard work that someone else has already done and use it for your own learning so one of the best examples is when I'm in medical school one of the exams we have to study for is step one and there are a lot of flashcards that people have created and some more popular ones that people use in such a silly way. for example, it's great and I include it for my Step One academy students, that's why it's here, but to get those types of cards, all you have to do is Google what you really want and see if there is a deck by Anki.

So if you're just trying to learn Spanish, I'm sure if you Google Spanish and you like Anki on Google, you'll find a flashcard pack for that. If you are trying to learn for the mcat, you can also find the respective flashcards there. Basically what you can do is try to find something on Reddit that is a good fit or sometimes the Anki website actually has it so in this example it does and all you have to do is click Download and then once it has finished downloading. you can just go to the file and import it, it will actually only take a little bit, but it will import into that profile that you created so you can see this is a pre-made deck that someone else created for a medical board exam and it has all the decks, as well as mini decks, and I can basically go into the topic in as much detail as I want, so now let's get to the part of the video that will probably be the most exciting and where I get geeky. is the one that takes the most advantage and that speaks to advanced strategies that you can use to really increase your retention.

Now, one of the biggest disadvantages of any flashcard system is that sometimes it takes you forever to create flashcards and then you really don't have enough time. really go through them so when I was in medical school I try to find as many techniques as possible to minimize the first part which is creating my flash cards and make them efficient now when you use closure and image occlusion again you can do multiple flash cards and essentially an effort, but some of the other things that I really enjoy doing is something I call my screenshot method, so essentially what you can do is, on the one hand, have a powerpoint of your lectures or a pdf of your syllabus, really any material. so you can have anki and you can use any of the snipping tools on Windows and PC or you can use the actual screenshot tools that the Macs allow you to do, then you can basically go ahead and screenshot the entire PowerPoint, so for example, let's say I was trying to create a card so I can click Add and I'm just going to create a basic one for the purposes of this video instead of having to write down multiple things from this card to try to memorize.

You know, the main thing is what I want. so I can get tested as quickly as possible on this powerpoint, so what I like to do is use the header of the powerpoint as the question and then I'll take a screenshot of just the overall powerpoint and you can Basically just ask yourself there so then you can have the PowerPoint and then slowly when you see the card, just squeeze one thing at a time. I talk about other things about how to do this method in several videos, so I'll link to them. below, but this will definitely speed up your flashcard creation process.

You can get to the learning part, which is the most important part now. The anki method or the screenshot method alone works fantastically. I've had students who have just been able to do it. increase your grade and improve your free time on its own, but if you want to get to a little bit more advanced stage, what you can do is convert this back to an image occlusion to use this combination of image occlusion as well. as anki method one of the cool things you can do is create a folder with all the screenshots you want and collect them or you can do it one at a time so that anki has the beauty of collecting the screenshots you want. just do it at the end, so for example, if I took a screenshot of this again and then I go into the occlusion of my image, it will memorize that that's basically what's saved, so now you can basically look at this card and ask you what parts I want. memorize, so let's say the basic things that I want to do for the study are I'm going to select the features of the flash card that are most important and I'm going to leave the rest blank and now I just wanted to basically say that I want to hide one and guess one, so six flash cards were created from this one. very fast powerpoint, so essentially without having to type anything, I was essentially able to create that flash card, so for example, let me show you what that would look like so you can see now the flash card appears and it's actually going to ask me on the card without that I have to go crazy with the question and the first part is going to be what is the basic workup for some of the atrial fibrillation, so I really need to know that I need to take your history and your chest x-ray. electrolytes, if I don't get it all, then I can say show it to me again and a minute, as you can see using this image occlusion tool plus the screenshot tool, you can essentially come out without having to type anything, um in reality. in anki itself and just using that powerpoint or syllabus lecture that you want to memorize and then using the image occlusion tool to make multiple cards and forcing yourself to memorize the things from the powerpoint that you'll actually end up having to do for the exam now , hope

full

y. you guys enjoyed those first two techniques.

I have a more advanced strategy to really share with you the power that Anki can do and really hone it, especially when you're studying for exams, one of the hardest things I had, especially when What started it was this ability to say "okay "when the exam approaches. I know there are difficult topics and easy topics. Anki is going to start quizzing me on everything and I really just want to focus on the hard stuff now because I know that's going to cost me my grade if I don't master them so one thing you can do is use the tags feature if you click and you basically explore what a label is.

Basically you can tag a card for multiple reasons so if you want to say one card is cardiology another card is an electrocardiogram another card is from this conference you know you have a lot of control but one thing I like to do is add different tags in terms of the difficulty level of a flashcard so let's say you know we're going through the browse type of menu. I found the cards I created. By the way, this is a great option for you to add notes, so if you know in this lecture and I'm learning something about atrial fibrillation, then I add my notes here and it will show up on my flash cards in the future, but really where I want focus is on the label, so let's say, for example, while I'm reviewing this flash card. time I realize it's a hard flash card and I go to the next one and I realize it's an easy flash card and then the next one I'll call it hard flash card and we'll just do one more on this For example, we'll just say which for some reason this flash card is hard now if I click on an option you can use and Anki is actually creating a filter deck and basically what a filter deck is is you can basically tell Anki I want this function. to create a deck, so what we can actually do is say anki, show me tags that are labeled as difficult and if you do this correctly, what you will find is it will say filter deck 1 or whatever and if you click study now, to show you those flash cards that you tagged at one time or another with that tag and as you can see these are all the tags that we added below and will continue now, the beauty of this method is that If you were studying for these cards in general, you can go to edit and add tags so this card already had a tag for difficult and now suddenly it's easy you can just write easy or if it never had a tag you can go. go ahead and label it based on difficulty so that as exam time gets closer you can start labeling topics based on how important and difficult they are for you because again when exam time gets closer you really just want to say , handsome, I know.

You want to use spatial repetition, but now I need to focus on difficult topics, please show me. This is a great way to avoid it. I hope those last few methods really give you some ideas on how to use anki and the power of anki and again, this is all free which is absolutely remarkable, but I want to give you a few remaining tips that I use to speed up my review process and really make them effective, so let's say, for example, we're going to Go ahead and study it for step one, so one thing you can do is, as you're checking the flash card, keep in mind the things that slow you down now, often, when we see a new flash card, the first type of method.

What I like to use to make sure that I'm always giving importance and priority to all the topics is that I have a kind of mental timer and sometimes I'll do it as low as 10 seconds, which means you have 10 seconds to respond. question and 10 seconds to review the actual answer that appears, so this keeps me from getting too deep into a flash card. I'm not going to just accept, you know, I don't know, show me again in a minute, let's say it's a flashcard and to keep me from getting too deep into the weeds of this figure, I can just say that you have 10 seconds and then you have to accumulate one or 10 minutes and therefore have this timer method, especially if you find it difficult to review the flashcards. works great now again, the amount of time you focus on each card doesn't really matter but having a timer keeps you going and that way one theme is not more important than the themes at the end of your set of cards and that's my timer method, but number two is really breaking down a big card into little chunks of information that you want to memorize, so again the beauty of Anki is that I can show it to you on a schedule so there's no pressure to try to memorize everything at once. time. and I feel that medical students and students in general will do this withfrequency, so let's say, for example, I'm trying to memorize the various structures of the skin and this flashcard, you know, someone's first approach will say, let me try that. memorize everything at the same time, but again you're not giving the same priority to other cards because when you get to the end of your card review you'll probably have low energy and less concentration, so what I like to do is instead, say, "Okay, you have about 20 seconds and let's memorize the first two layers of this and then I'll look at this flash card again, it's no big deal, so I can answer the question, so do it properly, but if there's something on the figure". or the powerpoint if you were using the screenshot method that you wanted to do, I'm just going to say, let's memorize these two so the horny and the grainy and then if I get them right, I can move on to the next three or four. structures you're labeling and I can click show it again in a minute.

Now I see that card next time. The first thing I have to ask myself is if I memorized those two things. If it's so cool, let's add one more thing and show it. again in a minute, this way you are constantly moving, all topics have the same priority and the learning process has a lot more flow and is not as stressful, but that guys is my broad overview on how exactly to use anki. I hope you enjoyed this video very much. They went to great lengths to show the different things that I personally use, things that I found that medical students and other students use, so let me know in the comments below what you guys think, what other questions you have.

I may have made it for Anki now, remember I've made tons of Anki related videos here on the YouTube channel, so be sure to check out that playlist below and while you're there, probably go ahead and get rid of it .button because if you made it to the end of the video, that means that hopefully the video gave you enough value and some ideas on how to use it for school, so if you enjoyed this video, I would really appreciate it if YouTube would at least show it. this video for as many students as possible, go ahead and hit the like button and if you enjoy the kind of advanced strategies that I have shared in this video, there are tons more on the YouTube channel and many more on the way, so go ahead and Hit the subscribe button and get notified if you enjoyed this video.

I know you will enjoy this video. How you can improve your grades and retention just by using one tip. Then this video is basically how I show you a complete tutorial on how. To use that honky screenshot method if you're on your medical journey then check out some of the programs I have for you below, they basically show you more step by step videos like this on how to improve your retention, get better grades and become in A less stressful medical student, but that being said guys, thank you so much for watching, thank you for being a part of my journey.

I hope it was helpful to you and I will see you in the next one, peace.