Hello Reader,

Today will only be a short email, and it's straightforward: How do you choose between the different answer buttons in Anki?

You may be curious how other people use this buttons, and of course, lying to yourself is kinda obvious at this point. But hey, should you really press "Hard" when it's difficult? Should you press "Easy" when it's quick to answer? What if you end up dealing with tons of reviews down the line, or worse, the Anki learner's nightmare — slowly approaching "Ease Hell"?

So here's my answer. The requirement for this to work is that you're using my recommended settings (or something close to it).

In the initial learning stages, press only "Good" or "Again."

Correct = "Good"; Wrong = "Again." It's simple.

Why not press "Easy" or "Hard"? Initial ease of recall is only an indicator of retrieval strength, but it doesn't necessarily guarantee that you will not forget it for a long time. That requires storage strength — i.e. the higher the storage strength, the slower you forget an idea.

Put simply, when the card is still new, retrieval will feel naturally easy, but this may be just because of the freshness of the material rather than how well it's consolidated in memory.

Thus, I recommend only pressing 'Good' when the card still hasn't graduated. This tactic has a dual purpose:

• You avoid graduating cards that are poorly formulated, hence acting as a filter for bad cards
• You go through all the learning steps, and thus you get good consolidation before you graduate even the good ones which you have learned deeply

Once the card has graduated, use "Easy" sparingly

When the card finishes the learning stages, I recommend you press Easy only when the ideas (that your flashcards tell you to recall) are already used as a foundation for other ideas. Examples:

• In Physics, it's easier to recall what "centripetal force" is when you have already applied the knowledge to make sense of how satellites orbit around the earth. There’s little need to actively try to remember “centripetal force” when you’ve already used the concept to make sense of more complex ones. So we can now press "Easy" on cards that prompt about the concept of centripetal force.
• Use Algebra to understand Calculus, Electromagnetics, Physics, and you'll find that Algebra becomes "second nature".
• I can retain my knowledge on human memory without having to actively do spaced repetition because everything I'm learning about memory stacks on top of each other.

You get the point — if an idea isn't used as a foundation for understanding something else, then chances are it's not encoded very well yet.

When the idea isn't encoded very well yet, only a few "retrieval routes" are present, so it will likely be forgotten if the interval gets too long. (i.e. when pressing Easy) So in that case, you'll need more repetition (and retrieval effort) to increase storage strength. That's why we don't press "Easy" even if it's fast to recall.

Lastly, stop worrying about individual intervals, dammit

I'm telling you this because there are people out there who have "ease hell anxiety" — the anxiety that you'll end up with a mountain of impossible to recall cards because you somehow messed up pressing the buttons.

Look, I want you to keep things simple, rather than constantly think of some kind of impending doom.

All you need is the retrieval effort that comes from having an interval between reviews.

That's it.

So pressing "good" and "again" will suffice, so long as you're encoding before you're making your flashcards.

And no, you're not "overtesting."

In fact, I want you to change that "absolute" way of thinking. It's unhealthy, and causes additional stress.

Heres the thing: compared to the way you've studied before Anki, the added 10 minutes to your total study time — just because you have pressed "good" instead of "easy" — is negligible.

If you're reviewing 20 more cards today, can you honestly call that OVER-testing? What the hell, man.

Heck, if we're talking "long-term", then if you had focused more on extracting the more important ideas, you can avoid overproducing flashcards in the first place. And the extra intervals for some of your cards won't matter, because you're not trying to make flashcards for every detail.

Like I always say, think about the entirety of your study system: How you pay attention, how you encode information also matter.

And you can save time outside of Anki.

So instead of beating yourself up by unnecessarily obsessing over ease factors, just keep it simple.

Focus on encoding to reduce the cards you need, think in terms of "ideas," not cards, and use lean settings and a simple way to review.

To smarter studying,
Al Khan

PS: Do you like to ride bikes, too? I just started cycling around the village lately, I have to say, cardio has been SO good for my brain and my workouts!

But honestly the initial "learning phase" is hard because I got used to doing only strength training. In the fitness community, "anything higher than 5 reps is cardio" LOL

PPS: LASS has sold out last March 12! If you're one of the people who joined at the last minute, thanks for joining. The next launch will be in April — and I've set up a waitlist for people who weren't able to join in the past week.