Anki entering clinicals: how much more to suspend?

[nichompson]

I have 3 paths I can take going forward. To preface I am slow at doing my anki (working on it) and my method in m1-2 messed with my algorithm a bit and it’s slowly healing. I start m3 in the next 2 weeks. I currently have about 270 reviews a day. I do not believe it is sustainable to continue this into clincials and I want to start working on my first rotations cards now.

My options as I see it now are

1. Brute force: keep grinding my cards (14204 unsuspended). Trust the process and hope the algorithm heals enough. Otherwise I’ll need to manage 400-500 cards a day during clinicals (maybe overestimating the additional Anki load).

2. Partial suspension: suspend either a) all cards not in the shelf tags (8646 unsuspended) or b) all cards in step 1 only (4892 unsuspended). I suspended all cards only in step 1 deck but there are some cards still in step 2 deck with tag:#AK\_Other::Only\_Step\_1. This would give me breathing room while keeping up with some old material.

3. Total suspension: dump all cards and start over. Really don’t think this is necessary.

I’ll do 1 if yall think it’s reasonable to do with u world and clincials + 1hr travel time in some rotations. Otherwise im between 2a or 2b. Leaning towards 2b since it’s less drastic. I will calibrate my FSRS again in a week or so (did it last in April after step) and I could reschedule cards on change, but I doubt that helps too much honestly.

I could change my retention from 90% to 85% or something in between which could make option 1 more viable.

To add, my current study plan is to grind out the remaining cards for a shelf (1007 left in tag:#AK\_Step2\_v12::!Shelf::FM) before or during said shelf, do uworld and incorrect cards, and try to continue old material. Previously I had a seperate deck for “current block” material with a higher retention rate which I think messed up my algorithm. That deck has since been deleted and I have learned how to filtered deck. I didn’t do this before in order to have a higher retention rate, but that did more harm than good it seems. I will also add that I have yet to go through and suspend any cards tagged as DELETE(duplicate) or !FLAG_THESE_CARDS since I wasn’t totally sure if I had the corresponding card unsuspended.

I am open to other ideas. Also if this is not the right place for this let me know. Not entirely sure where this type of question should go.

[Ahmed7]

Hello! I’ll give my two cents, it may be helpful.

In summary

• Suspend all cards tagged with #AK_Other::Only_Step_1 tag, they are not necessary for Step 2
• Reduce your retention rate from 90% to 85%, that will help a lot
• Continue with doing as many cards as you can per day but not worrying about the backlog

The last point is controversial, but this will help mentally. If you can comfortably do 250 a day, then do 250 a day, even if 400 is due for example.

I had this issue with rotations and I had like 500 minimum due per day, and since I wasn’t able to do 500 a day, I would just “give up” for that day and not do any because “I can’t do 500 so no point in doing them until I find time to”.

Then I just decided to do what I CAN do per day, that was around 200-300 per day somedays, and some days more, but its much healthier in the long run

@nichompson

I could reschedule cards on change, but I doubt that helps too much honestly.

I wouldn’t reschedule cards on change, I would just switch the retention down to 85% today

Unfortunately, the easiest answer to this is speeding up your Anki reviews (reasonably). Identify what takes up more time to do each card, are you reading the extra everytime? are you forgetting the concept? etc.

Try to get your average review time per card down to 8-12 seconds. Another method that I do is using a custom filtered deck and filtering by "decreasing intervals”. This way I do all the super easy cards first and get them out of the way, this also helps with motivation (at least for me)

[nichompson]

I ended up rescheduling to 85%. The initial cards are being sent pretty far out but I’ll trust the process since I haven’t been abusing hard or anything that should theoretically throw off my algorithm. New cards from now on will go in a different deck set at 90% retention.

I appreciate the tip with only doing what I can do reasonably. I’ll suspend the extra or ease my new cards based on that so long as it doesn’t impact uworld.