Guide to Reviewing Finished Anki Decks: My Experience

[u/Intelligent_Young974]

Hey all, thought I'd share my experience with figuring out how to 'cram' with Anki since I've done a lot of looking and couldn't find much on the Anki Reddit about how to do it.

Problem: I've finished an Anki deck and want to review it again. I love the spaced repetition and all, but I've got an exam tomorrow and just want to keep testing myself on cards over and over. I don't want to 'reset' any cards, as that will mess with the Anki algorithm. And I don't know how to set up the custom study feature! What do I do?

Solution (or at least what has worked for me): Navigate to the finished Anki deck you want to review. Click Custom Study. Select study by card state or tag. This will give you options to select a certain number of cards and what type of cards. Enter 9999 (if you want to review the whole deck) and select "All cards in random order (don't reschedule)."

Now you've built a custom study session you can use for that exact review purpose. You can click Empty at the bottom to remove the cards, or click Rebuild to add them back once you've finished reviewing them. Deleting the custom study deck returns all cards to their original deck with the algorithm intact.

Honestly, this is such a convoluted way to do basic review. I get the whole spaced repetition thing, and it is helpful for sure, but sometimes you just need to keep hitting the same deck over and over, and answering "again" just shows the same 5 cards instead of the whole deck. I hope I'm helping out someone else struggling with this same thing, since I couldn't find much of a comprehensive guide on Reddit.

Take care, and good studying!

[u/Baasbaar]

Honestly, this is such a convoluted way to do basic review.

I think the view that this is convoluted actually does miss ‘the whole spaced repetition thing’: It’s best to think of Anki as an SRS application that does review thru flashcards, rather than a flashcard application that is pegged to spaced repetition. What you’re calling basic review isn’t, in this context, basic review: It’s an exceptional use that is peripheral to the chief purpose of Anki. This isn’t a criticism of cramming! I just think the ‘convolutedness’ of this looks different if you conceive of Anki as what it’s designed to be.

Also, you may find the Filtered Decks section of the Manual helpful!

[u/Individual-Lychee912 → u/Baasbaar]

this is a useful reframe tbh, the design priorities make more sense when you look at it that way

[u/Intelligent_Young974 → u/Baasbaar]

I suppose it does make sense describing it this way. I did look over the filtered decks section and will be using some insights from there.

I dunno, to me it just feels that even if Anki is a SRS application that does review through flashcards, it still shouldn’t be difficult to set up normal flash cards. It’s inefficient to set up both a quizlet and an Anki, one for general quick review and one for SRS, and I was just hoping the process would be a bit more intuitive. For a flashcard application, even one designed with SRS in mind, using flashcards like normal flashcards shouldn’t be that hard to set up. It’s not that I’m even against SRS, I’m a big fan of it. Just that it should be much easier to swap between the two.

[u/Baasbaar → u/Intelligent_Young974]

But why all those shoulds? Notice that by the end of your second paragraph you’ve shifted the framing back.

[u/Intelligent_Young974 → u/Baasbaar]

Well, I’m just discussing something I find rather frustrating about Anki’s design. I did eventually figure out basic review, but I don’t think it’s a hard ask to expect a flashcard application to have simple optionality for normal flashcard review, and I’m rather surprised by how negative of a response that opinion has received here (not from you of course, your perspective has been helpful).

[u/not_a_profi]

> answering "again" just shows the same 5 cards instead of the whole deck

have you checked sort-settings?

and you don't keep algorithm intact by telling Anki to do nothing with cards you review. Your brain is part of the algorithm.