The front question should have just-enough context and be unambigious. The answer should be “obvious” if you can recall it.
Related to the Minimum Information Principle. Cards should be straight-forward. It is better to have many simple items over few complex items.
Extract Literature with Clozes
Suppose a resource contains the sentence: “Cloze deletion is the process of hiding one or more words in a sentence”. This can be converted into the cloze note:
Cloze {{c1::deletion}} is the process of hiding {{c2::one or more words}} in a sentence
This note results in two cards:
Cloze […] is the process of hiding one or more words in a sentence
Cloze deletion is the process of hiding […] in a sentence
Learn List and Enumerations with Cloze Overlapper
I use michalrus’ anki-simple-cloze-overlapper to help memorize enumerations. Each note should still be a manageable length, ~6 or fewer items. Taking note from (Wozniak, 1999)‘s Step 9, try to split up larger lists into semantic chunks.
Cloze overlapping is usually used to show the preceding cloze and hide everything else, e.g.:
Card 1
1. [..]2. -3. -
Card 2
1. foo2. [..]3. -
Card 3
1. -2. bar3. [..]
Read and Understand the material beforehand
If you blindly create Anki notes from a resource, the knowledge has no context in your mental modeling system.
Skimming and briefly understanding the material allows you to:
figure out which facts are important to remember
put the facts into context and see how they connect to each other and prior knowledge
Tips for Consistency
Split up sessions throughout the day, e.g. 30 min in the morning + 30 min at night.
Use text-to-speech feature and a bluetooth remote (controller) so that you can anki while walking or riding an exercise bike
Nielsen, M. (2018, July). Augmenting Long-term Memory. Augmenting Cognition. http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html
Nielsen, M. (2019, January). Using Spaced Repetition Systems to See through a Piece of Mathematics. Cognitive Medium. https://cognitivemedium.com/srs-mathematics
Wozniak, P. (1999, February). Effective Learning: Twenty Rules of Formulating Knowledge. SuperMemo Archive. https://super-memory.com/articles/20rules.htm