Anki How to Change Again and Good Interval
All-time Anki Settings: My Recommended Values (Updated for v2.i+)
In this lesson, yous're going to learn my recommended Anki settings and how settings work in a more applied manner.
That'southward because I don't only desire you to have "ready-made" templates, but as well a complete understanding of how the advice I'm giving you lot works.
Why? Because I desire yous to exist able to think for yourself rather than apply something you don't even know the purpose of.
Just to be clear, Anki'south default settings practice work.
Even so, in my experience, I found the default learning steps (more than on this later) gives a really poor review experience for both newer and older cards.
Newer cards don't become reviewed equally frequently, and older cards commencement back to zero when yous've lapsed even partially. (i.east. during tip-of-the-natural language moments)
Once you use these settings I'1000 going to give you, you'll be able to avoid these two bug correct abroad so you lot'll have a shine review experience every single time.
They're made-for-you settings that I plant the near optimal in my learning process. Again, I will also share with you the underlying concepts (and provided supplementary materials) so yous can tweak them on your own.
That being said, I do have to note two things:
- My recommended settings are more geared for conceptual learning than for memorizing vocabulary or isolated facts
- Changing your settings this style won't really brand or break your overall retentivity for conceptual learning. It just enhances the review experience.
Which means if you're constantly forgetting the majority of what you've studied even though you've already fabricated Anki cards for them, then mere settings are Not going to treat that problem.
Luckily, I take a solution for that — you'll learn it at the end of this mail service.
The Made-For-You Settings
This is an updated version that uses the recommended settings in the "LeanAnki Method" role of the study system course.
For Daily Limits:
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New cards/day = 9999. New information lacks depth, and should therefore be studied immediately. So you need to retrieve them in gild to make them stronger — at least, before they fade into oblivion when more complex concepts are nevertheless far ahead.
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Maximum Reviews = 9999. Retention of past knowledge makes futurity learning easier. But take annotation that this can only be truthful if y'all have encoded what y'all've learned before making flashcards. Otherwise, you but get fragmented, useless retentivity that cannot be used as an activated semantic context.
For the New Cards, I recommend these settings:
The Learning steps setting means that pressing Again shows the card in 10 minutes and pressing Practiced would show the card subsequently i day, then after you press "Good" on that, you'll see it again after 3 days.
So the first number is actually the number of minutes the card will evidence upwards again if yous pressed "Again".
The next two numbers make up one's mind the intervals when you lot press "Good".
And like the tab says, all of these merely utilize to New Cards.
Now, I don't recommend you pressing "Easy" correct away because that tends to skip the "learning steps."
You lot don't want that. Merely because a menu is easy to remember now doesn't mean information technology'due south going to exist remembered in the future — we have a bias to believe otherwise (cf. Stability Bias) and that'south the trap nosotros will fall into if we don't "filter the bad cards out."
Then, just to be on the safe side, get through all of your learning steps for your new cards by pressing "Adept." (Obviously, this doesn't apply to graduated cards — more on that in a sec.)
Now how do you know if the card has surpassed the "learning steps"?
You'll know information technology when the adjacent interval in the "Graduating Interval" appears. (in this case, it's 7 days)
When you lot see that selection, it means that that specific menu will graduate later you press "adept" or "easy". (Think of the steps as a "grade" in grade school — you lot have to go through all of them, right?)
When a bill of fare has graduated, the ease of retrieval (i.east. what buttons you press subsequently answering that bill of fare) will then determine how often that card will show up in the hereafter, rather than the learning steps.
Lastly, yous might be wondering why the "Insertion order" is prepare to Random.
What this does is make the questions show up in an interleaved style. Interleaved do helps yous dissolve boundaries betwixt subjects, and this is also why I recommend letting relevance determine deck cosmos. 1
So going back to graduated cards…
When the card has graduated, it will employ the "Lapses" and "Advanced" settings:
The Lapses settings, I don't care so much about that. 10 minutes is already fine for fugitive "mindless think" when reviewing lapsed cards, and I don't want my poorly-encoded cards disappearing, so I recommend not changing the "Leech Action" to "Suspend Bill of fare." (This commonly happens when your cards aren't encoded or future-proof)
Then here's the "Advanced" settings.
I primarily used Anki when I reviewed for my board exams, and I noticed that sometimes there were cards that are supposed to be extremely like shooting fish in a barrel simply take very low intervals.
If you detect that yous have those cards, this means that you lot take forgotten them somehow after they have graduated, and that they have already used the default "New Interval", which is 0%.
So I've set the "New Interval" setting to 0.60. This is crucial, because if you forgot something you've been successfully recalling for 3 years, do you lot really have to examination yourself as if it's a new bill of fare?
Clearly Non. And it's an inefficient use of fourth dimension and energy for a well-learned menu.
That'south why nosotros concede by turning the new interval to sixty%. Information technology'southward capricious, of grade, only I wouldn't recommend going below 50%.
This ways that if you have a graduated card, and you've pressed "Again," so the next interval will be set at 60% of the original. Significant, if you're supposed to meet that carte 100 days for a "Good" rating, then pressing "Once more" volition make it pop up afterward 60 days (0.6×100=60) instead of 100.
My rationale here, if information technology's not clear yet, is that well-learned cards practise not need to be reviewed the same way as a newly learned carte du jour.
If the depth of encoding 2 is the same, then there is already a base of operations of storage strength for the lapsed card. Since the large storage force slows down the rate of forgetting, it means that information technology will be forgotten way slower than a new card — which generally has depression storage strength iii .
At present, in case you desire to learn more than about these settings you can do that here (longer version) and here. (shorter)
Regarding your reviews with graduated cards, you should printing whatever option in the "Easy" "Proficient" "Hard" suits your judgement.
That'due south because from that point on, you want the Anki algorithm to exercise its magic for you.
To recap:
- The New Cards settings apply to, well, new cards that haven't yet graduated
- Press "Good" only for the newer cards to become through all your learning steps and avoid Stability Bias
- A specific card has "graduated" when you cease the learning steps
- Printing whatever review difficulty choice (i.e. Like shooting fish in a barrel, Good, or Hard) for graduated cards
Settings Aren't an Exact Science
If you've noticed already, these intervals are incredibly simple to tweak.
That'southward because they aren't verbal science.
If your goal is to just apply Anki more effectively and more efficiently in a applied way…
Then do y'all actually accept time to overthink almost the verbal information — i.e. "the pErFeCt aLgOriTHm" — instead of actually spending that time creating ameliorate cards that will amend your noesis base? Learning how to extract important information from a textbook?
Wait, even if some garbage news site "knew" what the "virtually effective & efficient Anki setting" is…
It HIGHLY likely that it fails to have into account:
- The context of what you're learning
- How specific your card is
- How future-proof it is
- How well they relate to your previous noesis
- …and then on.
…merely because these can't exist quantified.
In short, even if at that place'southward bachelor exact science out there, it probable fails to account the big picture.
So I argue it's better to keep this simple.
One caveat, though, is when you're not using Anki as a tool for learning concepts, but rather but to memorize facts.
I tin't speak for that — perhaps the most efficient intervals practise be for it.
(But hey, I doubt you're fifty-fifty gonna make information technology this far if you're not gonna utilize Anki for learning!)
Anki designers were actually criticized for not having "optimal intervals", but in defense of Anki, Nielsen argued:
I've heard this used as a criticism of the designers of systems such as Anki, that they make also many ad hoc guesses, not backed past a systematic scientific agreement.
Just what are they supposed to do? Wait 50 or 100 years, until those answers are in?
Give up design, and become memory scientists for the adjacent xxx years, so they tin can requite properly "scientific" answers to all the questions they need answered in the design of their systems?
We get that exact science is good for increasing the hazard success, but every action doesn't have to wait for exact data, particularly if you desire to make progress immediately.
Instead of waiting for retention scientists to somehow find the data for us, nosotros follow the offset principle of spaced repetition and learn the nuances for ourselves.
That is, to prepare increasing intervals for reviews.
Simple, and applied.
I might ask, "What if I'k overtesting/undertesting?"
You'd often hear this from other "advanced beginners", but frankly, it'southward impractical to stress yourself over them.
In example yous're asking the same question, hither's the solution:
Suit the settings appropriately.
Plain uncomplicated.
Of form, it'south like shooting fish in a barrel to say that the overall review time can be sped up when y'all use setting X or Y…
But frankly, at that place are more important things to address in the chiliad scheme of things.
Adjacent Pace: How to Utilize Anki Efficiently
Like I said, settings alone won't make or break your ability to retain most of the concepts you're learning.
Sure, it might help a flake — but the gains would be marginal at all-time.
It's more than of an optimization thing rather than a viability factor.
And, equally I've said in the showtime of this Anki Fundamentals serial…
Anki — or more accordingly, spaced repetition — is only one-third of the things you need for learning effectively.
Listen, if you're constantly tweaking your settings and yous're not seeing any substantial improvements, and then the trouble is probably non with Anki.
If you lot're interested to know more, then the next course — How to Use Anki Efficiently — is for you.
It's totally free, no signups required to start.
Footnotes
- See this article for more.
- Craik, F. I. One thousand., & Lockhart, R. S. (1972). Levels of processing: A framework for retention enquiry. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11(half dozen), 671–684. https://doi.org/ten.1016/S0022-5371(72)80001-Ten
- Bjork, R. A., & Bjork, E. L. (1992). A new theory of disuse and an quondam theory of stimulus fluctuation. In Essays in laurels of William Thou. Estes, Vol. 1: From learning theory to connectionist theory; Vol. 2: From learning processes to cognitive processes. (pp. 35–67). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.