Tip for Anki cards - write them in your own words

When we start looking at Anki as an upload function for our brains, it can be tempting to paste everything we come across into it. We think that by simply repeating it, we will know everything. However, this can quickly halt our progress because we don't understand text that we added to the cards. We struggle to successfully repeat such cards. We don't know what to say, where the material belongs, or what it even means. Therefore, it is not enough (well, maybe it is enough, but it is neither useful nor pleasant) to memorize material by heart. The key is to understand things.

If we understand something, we will remember it much better. If we process the knowledge in our heads and then express it in our own words, we can be more confident that we understand it. If we try to explain something, we also find out where we get stuck in the explanation. That is the area we do not understand enough, and that is where we can focus our further learning.

We can use this approach in making cards by:

1. First, reading some new knowledge.
2. Then asking ourselves questions about the things we have just read.
3. And finally, writing the answers in our own words from memory.
4. If we are unsure about something, we can check the answer in the material. Then we can add it to our flashcard in our own words.

In this way, we immediately use active recall at the beginning to remember what we read and ask ourselves questions. Then, we create answers in our own words, which immediately checks our understanding of what we have read. Such cards are much easier to review, and they help us retain knowledge that we actually understand.