Med school is already impossible enough. Why are we spending more time making cards than actually learning?

I just tallied up my hours this week:

• 12 hours typing biochem and anatomy notes into Anki

• 4 hours actually reviewing the cards

• 0 hours of sleep last night because I was formatting cloze deletions

I've tried everything to fix this:

• Premade decks? Missing 30% of my professor's random lecture points

• ChatGPT cards? Half the answers are straight up wrong, no way to verify

• Shortcuts? Still takes 2 hours to format a single lecture's cards

I know I'm not the only one here. I see so many of us burning out not from the material, but from the endless card making.

Who else has pulled an all-nighter just to make Anki cards? Drop your weekly card making hours below. I need to know I'm not alone in this.

https://preview.redd.it/gilngjb5pe2h1.png?width=1870&format=png&auto=webp&s=98517cc6d06319ecb1915969aefb6284cf6e2339

Feeling pretty good. Wondering about sustainability and mainly payoff for boards. I've slowly unsuspending some fairly irrelevant cards, but this is AnKing so vast majority are good cards

Is this possible? My brother is getting married this weekend so I want to try and get ahead and do my cards for tomorrow

Hi everyone, I’m pretty new to AnKing and trying to avoid drowning in unnecessary cards. What I want is to watch bnb, read an fa system and then do it's uworld followed by anki.

Mostly high yield / relatively high yield cards only.

Thanks!

Fala pessoal!

Estou querendo dar uma reorganizada total no meu Anki. Tenho muitos decks e flashcards importantes que NÃO quero perder, mas queria basicamente “zerar” meu progresso antigo.

O objetivo seria algo como:

• apagar histórico de revisões antigas;
• resetar intervalos/agendamentos das cartas;
• limpar estatísticas;
• talvez até limpar o mapa de calor/heatmap do Anki;
• deixar como se eu estivesse começando do zero, mas mantendo todos os flashcards e decks.

Queria saber:

1. Existe alguma forma segura/oficial de fazer isso?
2. Qual seria o melhor jeito?
3. Tem diferença entre “Forget Cards”, resetar scheduling ou apagar estatísticas?
4. Dá pra fazer isso sem bagunçar mídia, tags e organização dos decks?
5. Existe alguma forma de limpar especificamente o Heatmap sem mexer nas cartas?

Se alguém já fez algo parecido e puder explicar o passo a passo ou indicar o método mais recomendado, ajudaria muito.

Valeu demais 🙏

Intro

This approach is a way to do less daily reviews in exchange for other forms of studying. If you prefer Anki for studying, this does not apply to you. If you'd rather not do so much Anki, this is an approach to do so

I've observed many students ending up in "Review Hell" - a term coined back in the SRS days but is still relevant today. This is the cycle of having too many reviews every day, causing your overall retention to decline, meaning more incorrects, meaning shorter intervals, which causes more reviews every day, etc... and this pile-up of cards causes for less time to read/watch lectures/do practice questions, meaning you have to learn more with Anki and thus do more cards. All of this is a cycle which glues yourself to the spacebar for hours a day. I have classmates reporting 600-900 due cards every day; meanwhile I have ~350 a day, leaving me plenty of time to do practice questions and anything else I need to for the day.

There's plenty of simple advice on how to avoid this problem, such as lowering retention, suspending low yield cards, etc. however today I want to share a broader strategy and approach for doing cards which in the end will result in fewer cards.

The Strategy

Here's the principle: Do not unsuspend cards until you've learned it

You've probably heard this before, but let me actually explain it. This idea is at the core philosophy of spaced-repetition tools. The point of them is to help maintain information that you already know over time. There is little benefit in doing cards of which you do not understand. You'll answer Again more often, leading to shorter intervals and more reviews each day, and more often than not, you're just memorizing the card instead of the concept, calling into question how much you're actually learning.

But what does it mean to "actually" learn something? There's a few ways to look at this, but a simple rule of thumb is to wait until you've had multiple passes of the material, let's say 2-3 before unsuspending something. For example, watch a 3rd party lecture, review the slides, then go unsuspend. Or maybe you go do some practice questions afterwards then unsuspend, now that's 3 passes right there - you're more than ready to unsuspend now! The point is that you're not unsuspending after 1 pass of the material (or even 0 passes as some people do!). Notice in this case, you'll have much more context and understanding of the material by the time you unsuspend it. When you do the card, your brain will recall the context in which you've seen that material and makes connections, overall supporting the learning process. Additionally, you'll know things better so you'll answer cards correctly more often, meaning less reviews.

Some people swear by doing nothing but Anki all day, and if you truly insist on that then go do it. But i believe you would benefit much more from doing your learning in practice questions and using Anki as a supplement to retain that information. If you want a long-term fundamental strategy to cut down on reviews, this is it. If you wanna do 600-1000 reviews a day, then ignore this post and go finish your reviews

I’ve noticed I’m getting sibling cards on consecutive days despite having the FSRS Helper Add On toggled to auto dispersing them.

I mostly review on my phone. Has anyone else experienced this?

​

Like most of you I have way too many Anki cards to get through and way too much screen time on apps I don't need. So I built an app that forces me to answer flashcards before I can open distracting apps.

You import your Anki deck, pick which apps to block, and every time you try to open one, you get quizzed. It prioritizes cards you get wrong more often.

Image occlusion is supported.

It's been working way better than app timers for me because you can't just tap "ignore". you actually have to engage with the material.

I'm still running tests right now and I'd love feedback from actual med students who live in Anki all day. If you want to try it, DM me if you are Android or iOS and I'll send you a link. Anyone who gives detailed feedback gets a free week of premium (unlimited blocked apps, configurable cooldowns, Flashcards generator).

Hey everyone,

I'm a first year med student, been using Anki every day for 2 years now. Don't get me wrong—Anki changed my life. I would have failed my pre-med exams without it.

But I just did the math this weekend, and it blew my mind: I spend 2-3 hours a day making cards, and only 1 hour reviewing them. That's 10+ hours a week I'm spending typing out notes instead of actually learning.

I've tried every trick to speed this up:

• Importing premade decks (but they're always missing my lecture's specific points)

• Using ChatGPT to make cards (half the answers are wrong, no sources)

• Cloze deletion shortcuts (still takes forever to format)

I know I'm not the only one here. I see posts every week about people burning out from making cards. Why is this still such a huge pain point?

I got so frustrated that I spent the last 2 months building a little tool for myself. It takes my lecture notes and makes proper Q&A cards in 5 seconds, with sources for every answer so I know they're not wrong. It exports directly to Anki too, so I don't have to reformat anything.

It cut my card making time to 10 minutes a day. I'm not here to shill it—just curious if anyone else has this same problem.

How much time do you all spend making cards vs reviewing? Has anyone found a better solution that actually works?

I'm seeing like with the Step 1 deck there's Bnb, Bootcamp, OME etc. so just wondering what the best deck would be to use throughout M3 year. Thanks!

title explains it

I know this has been asked before and Ive gone down many rabbit holes trying to find it. does anyone have a document with all the tables and other illustrations in the anking deck please? I am aware i can download them from the cards individually just wondering if there was a way i can organize all images or scroll through a doc to find them rather than through cards

Is there any way to easily unsuspend certain tags in anki app (anking) like in desktop from sidebar where it is easily grouped under folders like Sketchy>BActeria? The app interface is really complicated for me to specifcally unsuspend certain tags. Please help

👑 AnKing Step Deck Update #28

Date: April 21st - May 18th 2026

Hi everyone! 👋

I hope you've all been doing great and keeping up with all your reviews!!

💨 Quick Summary

This month’s AnKing Step Deck update includes over 8,000 note updates and 8,000 new subscribers along with improved tagging for UWorld Step 3, CMS forms, and your favorite video resources, including Ninja Nerd, Bootcamp, Dirty Medicine, and more.

For those using B&B, the Hematology section tags have been updated. We’ve also added new illustrations, addressed concerns about prior AI-enhanced images, added a new syncope mnemonic card, welcomed a new maintainer to the team, and much more!

📝 This Month’s Deck Statistics

8,543 note updates! 🎉

8,194 new subscribers! 🫶

✅ Deck Updates

❓Question Banks

★ UWorld Step 3: New tags added for UWorld Step 3 QIDs (thanks to @pmtea)

★ CMS Internal Medicine Forms: New tags added for CMS IM forms 5 and 8 (thanks to @riyamehta)

★ CMS Neurology Forms: New tags added for CMS Neurology form 7 (thanks to @h_double_j)

📹 Video Resources

★ NinjaNerd: Brand new tags Step 1 and Step 2 added for various videos (thanks to @Tanner_G)

★ Bootcamp: New step 2 tags added!

★ Pixorize: New tags and images added for Psych drug videos (thanks to @victoriamarino)

★ DirtyMedicine: New tags added for neurology videos and biochem videos (thanks to @n.cranford and @thuthiii)

★ Boards & Beyond: All hematology tags have been updated for BNB Step 1 to match the website!

🩺 Other

★ Skin of Color Project: New images added (thanks to @mari1 and @mferzoco)

📈 Project Progress

🩸 Boards&Beyond Hematology Update

The hematology tags for Boards & Beyond have been updated to match the website! We hope you enjoy 🫶

💳 New Mnemonic Card

A new mnemonic card has been added to test the causes of syncope! Sync to receive this new card ⭐

https://preview.redd.it/8hvbceleux1h1.jpg?width=2830&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c10183ab5cecceed24e361384e783180c37dbc61

🎨 Illustration Projects

To make your studying even more effective, we’ve added tons of new illustrations to help improve your understanding! A few are shown below. Thanks to @caleb_meadows and @hisham242

https://preview.redd.it/7ghwanqdux1h1.png?width=1672&format=png&auto=webp&s=5fdd6bfa0ed8fa7e4766de536f25cdc3f91dc43e

https://preview.redd.it/fwgk8mqdux1h1.png?width=1634&format=png&auto=webp&s=b4e19ae896fe749b9504936ebf33793658851119

📸 Regarding image quality update

Last month, concerns of AI image use were brought up on Reddit, we wanted to address what we have been doing to ensure this doesn't happen again

To follow up and clarify what occurred, below is an explanation provided by the creator of the images

>"These were not prompt-generated images presented as illustrations. I manually drew the base image and intended details from scratch, then used an AI enhancer tool in post-processing to add realism that was then masked to specific areas. Unlike upscale tools, the enhancer tool doesn’t only upscale, it can also generate new details on top of or remove older ones, which could create mistakes such as the finger here. The only reason I did so back then was that I thought it would be valuable for the illustrations to look like real-life patients and fit the “hyper-realistic” style direction I was going for. This subset of images were not AI-generated but enhanced, my intent was that they were not created by prompting AI to generate the artwork, as they were drawn from scratch and enhanced afterward."

We've started fixing the images that were affected by this, see some examples below

https://preview.redd.it/f2xj5e5vux1h1.jpg?width=6756&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=91a8ef60f0b176aaca64eb13724974192525424f

🫶🏼 Community Shoutouts

A few community members were outstanding with their suggestions this month and we want to highlight their dedication!

Top 5 community members with the most suggestions accepted in the last 30 days:

1. @hunterlea91 (2,360)
2. @victoriamarino (1,635)
3. @qais8r (961)
4. @riyamehta (468)
5. @bootcamp_morganmoore (427)

🫶🏼 Most Liked Suggestions

Another domain we’d like to highlight is the number of likes/upvotes a user received for their suggestions in the last month! This usually means their suggestions were really well done and greatly benefited the deck:

1. @ansleywallace12 (13 likes)
2. @liewmh (11 likes)
3. @apkane, @blomma, @patfan09 (10 likes)
4. @adavis98, @colbyr, @mjsrok, @qais8r (9 likes)
5. @beefnudels (8 likes)

🫶🏼 Suggestion of the Month

The top suggestion with the most likes in the last 30 days was from user @liewmh with a total of 11 likes!

https://preview.redd.it/940w98ybux1h1.jpg?width=2420&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d67a88d71e015c6a0d84c8686f349a9558dfb1d4

Thank you to everyone who submitted a suggestion this month! ❤️

👩‍🔧 New Maintainer

We’re happy to announce this months new maintainer! They’ve been a regular suggestor for quite some time, helping out with formatting and content changes. Please give a warm welcome to:

1. @mochigirl 🎉

🏷️ Active Projects & Resource Tagging Outreach

If you're looking to help out with working on tagging the resources below or the projects, please reach out to ahmed@ankihub.net and we'll get you setup ASAP ❤️

NBME, CMS, UWSA, Free 120 Forms: @franinator, @konsbks, @riyamehta, @jcbxl1222, @buzzjoon1507, @avarghese95, @h_double_j

DirtyMedicine @awaheed, @thuthiii, @Rasheed

NinjaNerd @tsgraham, @hunterlea91

DivineIntervention Thanks to @windcon, the first episode for Step 2 has been tagged!

Skin of Color Project The Skin of Color Project is an initiative dedicated to addressing disparities in medical education by improving the representation and recognition of dermatologic conditions across diverse skin tones within the Step deck (special thanks to Mari Yasumi!) and thanks to @wilsondong41, @kasey_904 and @mferzoco

House, MD optional tags are still a work in progress (thanks to @pmarbly)

If you'd like to volunteer for any other TV show, or the following, let us know! (Chicago Med, ER, Code Black, Grey's Anatomy)

⌛Active projects that are pending

• Goljan
• Pixorize
• Osmosis
• Lecturio
• TrueLearn QIDs

🏆 Note: Those who contribute a significant amount will be gifted free premium AnkiHub subscriptions!

👋 Wrapping up

Thank you all for your time! Keep studying hard 💪

Take care everyone!

Warm regards,

The AnKing Step Deck Maintainers 🤍

🔗 Useful Links

AnkiHub Documentation Index

📚 AnKing Step Deck Submission Guidelines

AnkiHub Ambassador Application Form

AnKing Step Deck Update Log

Get support from our team https://community.ankihub.net or email us at support@ankihub.net

Want to volunteer for a project? Reach out to ahmed@ankihub.net