Anki’s algorithm attempts to schedule cards such that you are just barely able to successfully remember them. Reviewing flashcards for 15 minutes per day does not sound like a particularly large time investment, but it takes a disproportionate amount of mental exertion. Since that first encounter with spaced repetition, I have used it (somewhat) more successfully to build my foreign vocabulary, internalize mental models learned from other fields, and most recently to review math proofs in order to improve my retention while studying my masters degree part-time. It was the classic university student use-case: how can I cram all this knowledge into my head for just long enough to pass next week’s exam? Even though Anki’s algorithms are optimized for long-term retention, they are still the best approach for short-term cramming. I first downloaded Anki during my first year of undergrad, less than 48 hours before taking my final exam for Latin and Greek roots in English. I’ll focus the rest of this post on my own personal use-cases for the tool. WTF is Anki?įor the uninitiated, Gwern provides an excellent overview of spaced repetition and its effectiveness as a learning tool. Since this amounts to over 300 hours of my life at this point, I figured it would be worth reflecting on this habit and deciding whether it is a worthwhile investment of time going forward. On average I spent 17 minutes each day to review 130 cards.

During that time I have added 20k cards and reviewed 140k. I was looking at my Anki deck stats the other day and realized that I have been using it for just over three years now.

Average anki cards per day