When creating your Anki cards, try to find an image for most of your cards. It doesn’t always have to be exactly related to the card, either. If the topic of the card makes you think of something unrelated, find an image of it. While this may take upfront time and investment, over the long term it greatly reduces your learning time. Be generous with inserting images into Anki. Go on Google images, search for something relevant, and quickly copy/paste it or screenshot into Anki. Knowing your shortcuts will save you loads of time here.

Your memory is much more efficient at retaining visual than text based information. It makes sense – we’ve evolved over millions of years and only had written language for a small percentage of our existence.

If you’re finding it difficult to stick with the minimum information principle, then Cloze deletions are a great tool to break your bad habits. They’re also incredibly efficient to create, as you can copy text from your powerpoint or notes and create Cloze cards in just seconds.

The Minimum Information Principle reminds us that simple is easy, and that simple cards are easier to review and schedule. Consider this. If a single card has two sub-items, you need to keep repeating the card to keep the more difficult item in your memory. However, if you split this single card into two separate cards, each can be repeated at their own pace, ultimately saving you time in the long term.This is arguably the biggest offense of most students when they first begin using Anki. Most students make very complex cards that could be broken down into a dozen or more sub-items. I was guilty of doing this for much of medical school.

A surprising number of students succumb to the mistake of trying to memorize something that they don’t comprehend. There is little utility in memorizing a string of information if you are not able to adequately conceptualize and place it within a mental scaffolding.

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