The need for short questions

It's important to make questions as short as possible. The shorter and easier to answer the questions are, the faster you'll be able to review, and the better Anki will be able to separate difficult items from easy ones.

Imagine you want to memorize the names of the 7 dwarfs. A bad way to this would be to create a single card like:

Question: name the 7 dwarfs
Answer: Bashful, Doc, Dopey, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Sneezy

The problem with the above card is that it is difficult to recall all 7 at once, and takes a long time. If you make a mistake and forget a single name, you have to repeat all 7 again.

A better approach is to divide up the information into multiple cards:

Question: one of the 7 dwarfs, starting with B
Answer: Bashful

Question: two of the 7 dwarfs, starting with D
Answer: Doc, Dopey

.. and so on. The same can be applied for language questions - try to avoid long, difficult to recall sentences, in favor of shorter sentences or phrases.

You can read more about this at the SuperMemo website: http://www.supermemo.com/articles/20rules.htm

Don't try too hard

Studies have shown that it's more productive to review material again if it's too difficult to recall. If the answer to a card doesn't come to you within a couple of seconds, you should probably fail it and review it later, instead of struggling to recall the answer.

The timer

Anki tracks how long it takes you to show the answer to a question. This time is used for estimating the time required to finish reviews, and is recorded in the statistics, but it is not used for determining when to schedule the next card.

The timer display is located in the bottom right of the Anki window. When you display a new card, it will start counting.

If you've set a session time limit, the timer will flash the remaining time in blue every time you answer a card.

The timer exists for two reasons:

• To encourage you to create easy to answer material
• To help you notice you're spending too long thinking about an answer.

The timer is not there to rush you along. Answering questions is not a race, and nothing bad will happen if you take longer to answer a card. So if you need to make some tea or leave the computer, don't worry that the timer is still counting. If you take more than 1 minute, Anki assumes you've been distracted, and records the time taken as only 1 minute. This is twice SuperMemo's 30 second limit. However, if you are regularly exceeding 1 minute per card during the course of your reviews, it would be a good idea to try to rearrange your cards so they can be reviewed more quickly.

As a rule, you should try to create questions you can answer in under 10 seconds. Consider failing the card at 10 seconds and trying again later.