Freedom!

[rdearman]

I think most of the time when people use anki it turns into a torture machine. Mainly because it isn't going to show you stuff you know, it is going to show you stuff you're not remembering. Any you have to control the amount of reviews. If you do start off all crazy enthusiastic and then discover you don't have the time or energy, then put a cap on the reviews! I often see people forget that you can just say "20 reviews and no more!" and Anki will obey.

As I said earlier, this thread actually gave me the incentive to start using anki again, this time with Korean. I only have the words the teacher gave me, and I have a cap of 50 reviews per day. So easy to do when walking the dog at lunchtime and then that is it.

[alaart]

I think most of the time when people use anki it turns into a torture machine. Mainly because it isn't going to show you stuff you know, it is going to show you stuff you're not remembering. [...]

Ah, these cards that come up again and again, and you know you studied and forgot them, and maybe you remember you encountered it on page 57, but you still don't know the answer. I remember the pain from earlier Anki years.

Now I just delete them
Or at least deactivate them and hope they will come up again within another context where I can grasp the meaning better. Basically if a card is like that, it is a bad card. My brain cannot create a link between the word and the meaning or something.

If I'm motivated (which I'm often not) I try to change that. I try to add more samples and context, search for the word in google and try to pick up a sentence with it. Translate it back and forth to different languages and see what fits the word best, maybe I can't remember the English translation, a German or Japanese one might be more accurate.

Example:

If I would tell you that one of the major German political parties is called CDU, you might forget it quite quickly. Now I could tell you more details. C stands for Christian, and it was the party of former chancellor Merkel. It was the biggest party for the majority of the last 40ish years, but recently it lost the election. Now suddenly you get a more detailed picture for this random fact, and your chance of remembering it will increase dramatically. Maybe you will forgot its name, but you will still remember the C for christian. Then if you encounter it again, you might finally remember it.

What I have often trouble with are list of words like colors or animals. Again, I try to create more context. I finally remembered the colors for red and green because of a situation with a traffic light. Yay, context!

So in summary: If a card is not working. Delete it, change it, investigate, add context. Anki is telling you something. Your memory is not like a A=B memory machine, but sometimes it just needs more context or clarification.

At least that is how it works for me.

[luke]

What I have often trouble with are list of words like colors or animals. Again, I try to create more context. I finally remembered the colors for red and green because of a situation with a traffic light. Yay, context!

Context is very helpful. Adding an image to a card is easy with copy/paste from images.google.com or images.bing.com. Sometimes a juxtaposition is helpful too. I did that with "six lawyers in fancy frocks and tophats" recently. (A picture of 4 and 2 pictures of 1 each).

Things like that political party you referred to might could also be the juxtaposition of 3 images. (discourse is good too).

Here's a trick. refriega = skirmish / scuffle. It happens to be feminine, which is obvious when you see the TL, but not so obvious from "skirmish". What to do? In addition to the text, a picture of a skirmish and this second image to remind that it's feminine:



And if Anki is getting wearisome, cut down or cut off the new cards, as has been mentioned, and then resist the temptation to increase new cards until you have several days in a row of, "gosh, I wish I could do more Anki".