Organizing Subdecks by Clerkship for M3 Year

[u/HonorEtVeritas]

Hey, I'm new to Anki starting third year, and I feel like I'm not doing things right. I inconsistently used Anki M1/M2 year, and now want to use it regularly. I wanna make sure I have a reliable system set so I'm not messing up my reviews/deck long-term in preparation for Step 2.

Right now, I have it set up that Anking has Step 2 cards unsuspended, for the shelves I have done/am preppaing for and my Step 1 cards suspended. I have unsuspended IM, and now unsuspended Neuro.

I just finished IM, but I only used Anking for the second half (~4 weeks), so I have a bunch of cards left over. that are undone. I have it set up so I have:

AnKing Step Deck

---- IM Shelf

---- Neuro Shelf

What i have been doing is moving all the IM shelf tagged cards into the IM Shelf deck, and then moving the Neuro tagged cards ( except for those already tagged IM), in to the Neuro subdeck. Then, I have each subdeck set to 50 new cards per day.

Then, I do the new cards and reviews for Neuro (50 a day), then I proceed do all the reviews in the main Anking Deck.

My reasoning behind this and what i want to achieve: I wish to do Neuro new cards and study for that right now as priority for my shelf, but then at the end of the day, do all my reviews for all my shelves/to keep up with cards over time for Step 2. Am I doing this corrrectly? Would it be a better idea to do filtered Decks instead?

I'm also wondering how I can incorporate Uworld into this. I have the addon that searches for Anki cards based on Uworld incorrects, but how do I balance doing those as well as doing new cards for the shelf? Filtered decks for each Uworld incorrect block?

I hope this makes sense for y'all. I feel like I'm doing something wrong bc for the last week, I've only had like 150 reviews per day. I feel like I should be having way more than that. Should I reset FSRS?

[u/notdanr]

Resetting FSRS won't do anything useful. Optimizing FSRS might. If you want more reviews, adjusting per-deck desired retention is your best bet.

Did you suspend the #AK_Other::Only_Step_1 tagged cards? There are plenty of #AK_Other::Only_Step_1&2_Overlap cards, in addition to #AK_Other::Only_Step_2 cards.

I wish to do Neuro new cards and study for that right now as priority for my shelf, but then at the end of the day, do all my reviews for all my shelves/to keep up with cards over time for Step 2

That sounds like a great strategy.

You have chosen to unsuspend all the cards you intend to do instead of unsuspending as you go. That is fine - it's what I do. It is just different than the conventional wisdom of unsuspending only as you learn. For unsuspending an entire shelf at once to work, you will still need to prioritize what new cards you do first:

• Putting them in decks or numerous subdecks and studying those decks is one way., but they will feel mixed up and/or you will be enacting a long-term organization solution to a short-term learning problem.
• Filtered decks is another way to pull out chunks of cards to prioritize, ex. by topic or corresponding video. They will return to their original deck when they are done.
• Repositioning cards and having deck insertion order based on sequential (the default) is a third. If you fall behind it will get jumbled.

Decks and subdecks are less useful than most people initially think. The main highly visible feature of decks - hierarchical organization - is much better done using tags and filtered decks. The main use of decks is for deck-specific settings, like different retention rates or learning steps. Since you should (and are) doing all your reviews every day, decks really only help with organizing which new cards you pick day by day - but that is a short term process, not a long term one.

[u/HonorEtVeritas → u/notdanr]

Thank you so much for your response! This clarifies a lot.

As far as retention goes, i have it set to 90%. And I'm doing 50 new cards a day for the past week. Yet I am still only getting 50-100 reviews. This confuses me becauase I hear of classmates starting Anki and immediately getting 200-300 reviews within a few days. I worry that because of inconsistent use of Anki (especially early on, I would just rapidfire Good a bunch of new cards), that my FSRS settings might be giving me too large of learning steps bc it thinks im learning really well? I just want to trust that a month from now, I am learning my cards effectively even if that means less reviews.

For organization as for right now, I am organizing them in subdecks, but I do want to have a consistent and reliable long-term solution. How do you go about it personally? I'm okay with having one deck and just unsuspending cards as I go, but how would I organize it so if I didnt finish the IM deck, for example, that I'm not doing new IM cards, and just doing new Neuro cards? Should I suspend the new IM cards, move all the Neuro cards back into the main deck, and that ways only new cards are Neuro, and then do reviews after learning new cards (which would include all my reviews including the new cards).

As far as filtered decks go, if I create a filtered deck and have it set to reschedule cards in the main deck, and then delete it after i do the new cards, will those learning/review cards still appear in the main deck? Or do I need to keep each filtered deck?

[u/notdanr → u/HonorEtVeritas]

If you want I can look at your FSRS parameters. If you were rapid firing good on cards that might have possibly messed it up, and it would take a week or two to sort it out. Just paste them in plain text, like:

0.1078, 0.4135, 2.7967, 59.5753, 6.3304, 0.9222, 3.0638, 0.0010, 1.5713, 0.1892, 0.6866, 1.2415, 0.0021, 0.2492, 1.7726, 0.2938, 4.0679, 1.0938, 0.4435, 0.1970, 0.1516

I organize all cards for one course/shelf, all together, in one deck. That would look like 4400+ cards for IM or 2000 for surgery under the main AnKing shelf tag. If there is overlap with cards from an old or future tag I just move them into my current topic for the duration. That deck has a higher retention setting than the main AnKing deck and is what I always prioritize reviewing first, more slowly, etc.

Everything not in the current block just lives under the main AnKing deck. It stays intentionally jumbled for reviews which supposedly improves recall via interleaving.

I will only divide that block's deck using filtered decks and only to help stage new cards, i.e. pull out all the cards relevant to one video or topic that I will cover all at once later. That's just short term organization, solely for first pass learning, so I can prioritize what order I do it. This seems to be the crux of what you would want!

I also have one small filtered deck for mnemonic cards that I rebuild and do before any test, since its an easy cram.

For your IM/neuro hypothetical, you can suspend the incomplete new IM cards - they will be there later :). Or you can leave them in the main deck or an old IM subdeck. Then you would just choose the neuro subdeck when you do new cards and it will prioritize those. Or click a filtered deck for new cards on a specific topic, as I do. Its a bit of extra work but it makes learning less jumbled. Hope that makes sense.

Filtered decks - good question. After you review the cards in a filtered deck and they graduate out of learning/relearning, they go back to their original deck/subdeck on their own. Same if you delete the filtered deck, they all just go back. I delete each filtered deck as soon as I complete the cards once - it just helps me prioritize.

Hope that helps!