Yet Another Anki Appreciation Post

I have a particular approach to learning that I'm a bit of an evangelist for. The downside of this approach is that it requires a small daily commitment (5-15 minutes), the upside is that the info you learn you retain basically forever (it's also 100% free).

This approach is built around a technique called spaced repetition, where the idea is basically that you use Q&A flashcards that continually reappear to you over time — each time you answer correctly the reappearance interval lengthens.

The "calculating the reappearance interval" part of spaced repetition is not something anyone wants to do manually — fortunately we have computers. There are various applications out there for spaced repetition. I use the (100% free) software Anki for my flashcards.

What Makes a Good Flashcard

For this technique to work you need to have good flashcards. There are 2 basic qualities of a good flashcard:

  1. Atomicity — a flashcard asks exactly one thing
  2. Zero ambiguity — a flashcard has exactly one correct answer

Spaced repetition has something of a community around it, and much has been written about how to make good flashcards.

Using LLMs to Vet Flashcards

The spaced repetition technique has been around for a while, but I think that LLMs offer a helpful advancement to the practice. I typically don't use LLMs to make flashcards: for one, they really suck at it; and two, creating the flashcards is a fundamental part of the learning process. However, LLMs can be good at vetting flashcards. I have a template prompt I give to Claude for most of my flashcard drafts: 

Is this a good flashcard?

front: What is the typical purpose of port 8080?
back: Alternative to port 80 for HTTP

These are the qualities of a good flashcard:
- Correct: The question is coherent and the answer is correct.
- Atomic: Each card should test only one fact or idea.
- Unambiguous: The question should have exactly one possible interpretation and exactly one answer.
- Concise: The front and back should be as short as possible.
- Active Recall: The front should require you to actively retrieve knowledge, not just recognize it.
- Bad Note Types: The card should not be True/False or multi-choice.

Building the Habit

It doesn't take long to get started with spaced repetition, but I think the big thing is the daily habit. If you miss a few days you can end up with a large backlog of flashcards. So it works best if you can find some daily "review time", maybe at the start of your day. I think about my Anki reviews like I think about going to the gym — this is my habit for keeping my brain fit.