How to Change Again Time in Anki

Best Anki Settings: My Recommended Values (Updated for v2.i+)

March iv, 2022 March 3, 2022

How-do-you-do, this is Lesson 4 of iv in the Anki Fundamentals free course. I promise you like it! Let me know if you have whatever questions or feedback — I'd like to hear what y'all think! 🙂

In this lesson, you lot're going to larn my recommended Anki settings and how settings work in a more practical style.

That's because I don't but desire you to have "fix-made" templates, simply also a complete understanding of how the advice I'g giving you lot works.

Why? Because I want you to be able to recall for yourself rather than use something you don't even know the purpose of.

Just to be articulate, Anki's default settings practise work.

Still, in my experience, I found the default learning steps (more than on this afterwards) gives a really poor review experience for both newer and older cards.

Newer cards don't get reviewed as frequently, and older cards outset back to nix when you lot've lapsed fifty-fifty partially. (i.eastward. during tip-of-the-tongue moments)

Once you use these settings I'm going to give y'all, you lot'll exist able to avoid these two problems correct abroad so you'll accept a smooth review experience every single time.

They're made-for-you lot settings that I found the most optimal in my learning process. Again, I volition also share with you the underlying concepts (and provided supplementary materials) so you can tweak them on your own.

That being said, I practice have to notation two things:

1. My recommended settings are more geared for conceptual learning than for memorizing vocabulary or isolated facts
2. Changing your settings this way won't really brand or intermission your overall retention for conceptual learning. Information technology just enhances the review experience.

Which means if you lot're constantly forgetting the majority of what yous've studied even though you lot've already made Anki cards for them, so mere settings are NOT going to treat that problem.

Luckily, I accept a solution for that — you'll learn it at the end of this mail service.

The Made-For-You lot Settings

This is an updated version that uses the recommended settings in the "LeanAnki Method" part of the study system course.

For Daily Limits:

• New cards/twenty-four hours = 9999. New data lacks depth, and should therefore be studied immediately. And then you lot demand to call back them in club to make them stronger — at to the lowest degree, before they fade into oblivion when more circuitous concepts are still far ahead.

• Maximum Reviews = 9999. Retentiveness of by knowledge makes future learning easier. Merely take note that this tin simply be true if y'all have encoded what you've learned before making flashcards. Otherwise, you but get fragmented, useless retention 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 Proficient would show the card after 1 day, and then after you press "Good" on that, y'all'll see information technology once again later on three days.

Then the first number is really the number of minutes the bill of fare will show upward again if yous pressed "Again".

The side by side two numbers determine the intervals when you press "Good".

And similar the tab says, all of these simply employ to New Cards.

Now, I don't recommend you pressing "Like shooting fish in a barrel" right away because that tends to skip the "learning steps."

You don't want that. Merely considering a bill of fare is piece of cake to remember now doesn't mean information technology's going to be remembered in the future — we have a bias to believe otherwise (cf. Stability Bias) and that's the trap we will autumn into if we don't "filter the bad cards out."

So, only to exist on the safe side, go through all of your learning steps for your new cards by pressing "Practiced." (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"?

Y'all'll know it when the next interval in the "Graduating Interval" appears. (in this case, it'south 7 days)

When you see that selection, it means that that specific menu will graduate after you printing "practiced" or "easy". (Retrieve of the steps as a "grade" in grade school — you have to go through all of them, right?)

When a card has graduated, the ease of retrieval (i.e. what buttons you press after answering that card) will then make up one's mind how oft that bill of fare will testify upward in the futurity, rather than the learning steps.

Lastly, y'all might be wondering why the "Insertion order" is fix to Random.

What this does is brand the questions show up in an interleaved way. Interleaved practice helps you dissolve boundaries betwixt subjects, and this is as well why I recommend letting relevance determine deck creation. ¹

So going back to graduated cards…

When the carte has graduated, it volition utilise the "Lapses" and "Advanced" settings:

The Lapses settings, I don't intendance then much about that. 10 minutes is already fine for fugitive "mindless remember" when reviewing lapsed cards, and I don't want my poorly-encoded cards disappearing, so I recommend not irresolute the "Leech Action" to "Suspend Menu." (This usually 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 but accept very depression intervals.

If you find that you have those cards, this ways that y'all have forgotten them somehow after they accept 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, considering if y'all forgot something you've been successfully recalling for three years, do you really have to exam yourself as if it's a new card?

CLEARLY Not. And it'south an inefficient utilise of fourth dimension and energy for a well-learned bill of fare.

That'south why we concede past turning the new interval to threescore%. Information technology's arbitrary, of course, but I wouldn't recommend going below l%.

This means that if y'all take a graduated menu, and you've pressed "Again," and then the next interval will be prepare at 60% of the original. Significant, if you lot're supposed to run into that card 100 days for a "Good" rating, so pressing "Once more" volition brand information technology pop up after 60 days (0.6×100=60) instead of 100.

My rationale here, if it's not clear even so, is that well-learned cards do non need to be reviewed the same way as a newly learned bill of fare.

If the depth of encoding ^two is the same, then in that location is already a base of storage force for the lapsed card. Since the large storage force slows downwards the rate of forgetting, it means that it will be forgotten way slower than a new card — which generally has low storage strength ³ .

Now, in case you want to acquire more than almost these settings yous can do that hither (longer version) and hither. (shorter)

Regarding your reviews with graduated cards, you should press whatever option in the "Easy" "Good" "Hard" suits your judgement.

That's considering from that indicate on, you lot want the Anki algorithm to do its magic for you lot.

To epitomize:

• The New Cards settings apply to, well, new cards that haven't yet graduated
• Printing "Good" only for the newer cards to go through all your learning steps and avoid Stability Bias
• A specific menu has "graduated" when you finish the learning steps
• Press whatever review difficulty option (i.e. Piece of cake, Skillful, or Hard) for graduated cards

Settings Aren't an Verbal Science

If you've noticed already, these intervals are incredibly unproblematic to tweak.

That'south considering they aren't exact science.

If your goal is to just apply Anki more than finer and more efficiently in a practical manner…

Then exercise you really take time to overthink almost the exact data — i.e. "the pErFeCt aLgOriTHm" — instead of actually spending that fourth dimension creating improve cards that will amend your knowledge base? Learning how to extract of import information from a textbook?

Look, even if some garbage news site "knew" what the "most effective & efficient Anki setting" is…

It HIGHLY likely that information technology fails to have into business relationship:

1. The context of what y'all're learning
2. How specific your card is
3. How future-proof it is
4. How well they relate to your previous knowledge
5. …and so on.

…just considering these can't be quantified.

In brusk, even if at that place'south available exact science out there, it likely fails to account the big movie.

And so I argue information technology's improve to go along this simple.

Ane caveat, though, is when you're non using Anki as a tool for learning concepts, but rather only to memorize facts.

I can't speak for that — perhaps the near efficient intervals do be for it.

(But hey, I doubt you're even gonna make it this far if y'all're not gonna use Anki for learning!)

Anki designers were actually criticized for not having "optimal intervals", only 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 as well many advertising hoc guesses, not backed by a systematic scientific agreement.

But what are they supposed to do? Await 50 or 100 years, until those answers are in?

Give up design, and become memory scientists for the next 30 years, and then they can give properly "scientific" answers to all the questions they need answered in the blueprint of their systems?

Nosotros get that exact science is practiced for increasing the adventure success, but every action doesn't take to wait for exact data, especially if you desire to brand progress immediately.

Instead of waiting for memory scientists to somehow discover the data for usa, we follow the first principle of spaced repetition and learn the nuances for ourselves.

That is, to set increasing intervals for reviews.

Elementary, and practical.

One might ask, "What if I'k overtesting/undertesting?"

You'd often hear this from other "advanced beginners", but frankly, information technology'southward impractical to stress yourself over them.

In case you're asking the same question, hither'southward the solution:

Suit the settings accordingly.

Apparently elementary.

Of course, it'due south piece of cake to say that the overall review time tin be sped upwardly when yous use setting X or Y…

But bluntly, there are more important things to address in the chiliad scheme of things.

Next Pace: How to Use Anki Efficiently

Like I said, settings solitary won't brand or interruption your power to retain about of the concepts you're learning.

Sure, it might help a flake — simply the gains would be marginal at best.

It's more than of an optimization thing rather than a viability gene.

And, as I've said in the first of this Anki Fundamentals series…

Anki — or more appropriately, spaced repetition — is just one-third of the things you demand for learning effectively.

Listen, if yous're constantly tweaking your settings and you're not seeing any substantial improvements, then the problem is probably not with Anki.

If you'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

1. See this article for more.
2. Craik, F. I. Yard., & Lockhart, R. S. (1972). Levels of processing: A framework for memory research. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11(half-dozen), 671–684. https://doi.org/x.1016/S0022-5371(72)80001-X
3. Bjork, R. A., & Bjork, E. L. (1992). A new theory of disuse and an quondam theory of stimulus fluctuation. In Essays in honour of William Yard. Estes, Vol. 1: From learning theory to connectionist theory; Vol. ii: From learning processes to cerebral processes. (pp. 35–67). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

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Source: https://leananki.com/best-settings/

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