Anki

What Anki is

Anki is a program for digital flashcards. You write a question on the front and an answer on the back, and then the program decides when the card will be shown again. If you answer correctly without hesitating, it takes longer until the next time. If you struggle, the card comes back soon. The point is that you repeat just before you would have forgotten, instead of relearning everything at the last minute.

In a company it is used for more than vocabulary. Product facts that need to stick when a customer asks at a trade fair, prices, margins, what you answer to the toughest objection, and the five sentences that are your elevator pitch. Cards that need to be known by heart when someone is standing in front of you and looking at you.

Install on Windows

1. Go to apps.ankiweb.net and click Download.
2. Choose Windows. You get a file that ends in .msi.
3. Double-click the file and click through the installation. The default choices are fine.
4. Start Anki from the Start menu.

Install on Linux Mint

You cannot just double-click here, because Anki does not provide a deb file. You need the Terminal for a few minutes. Open it by pressing Ctrl, Alt and T at the same time.

First the system libraries that Anki's own documentation lists for Debian and Ubuntu, which Mint is based on. Type this on one line:

sudo apt install libxcb-xinerama0 libxcb-cursor0 libnss3 libxcb-icccm4 libxcb-keysyms1 zstd

Then download the file that ends in linux-x86_64.tar.zst from the same download page. It ends up in the downloads folder, which is called Hämtningar on a Swedish Mint and Downloads on an English one. The first line below goes to the right folder regardless of which language the computer uses:

cd "$(xdg-user-dir DOWNLOAD)"
tar xaf anki-*-linux-x86_64.tar.zst
cd anki-*-linux-x86_64.tar
sudo ./install.sh

Then start the program by typing anki and pressing Enter, or find it in the menu. The word sudo means that the computer asks for your password to be allowed to change something outside your own folder. Nothing appears when you type the password, and that is intentional.

Three things to do first

1. Create your own deck. Click Create Deck at the bottom and name it after what it covers, for example Product facts.
2. Add five cards and review them right away. Five is enough to get a feel for the rhythm: you see a question, try to answer in your head before you turn the card over, and then tell the program how easy it was, which is the only decision Anki needs from you. Do not wait until you have a hundred.
3. Get a free AnkiWeb account and sync. Then the cards remain even if the computer breaks, and you can review on your phone when you have a few minutes to spare. The Android app AnkiDroid is free; for iPhone the app is paid.

The most common trap

Almost everyone starts by pasting in a whole paragraph on the front and a whole paragraph on the back. It feels efficient. It does not work, because the brain cannot answer right or wrong to a whole paragraph, and after a week every repetition becomes a chore that you put off until you stop completely.

Split it up instead. A card should hold a single thing: a price, a name, a year, a definition. If you have five facts in one paragraph, that becomes five cards. They are faster to make than you think, and each card takes only a few seconds to answer.

The other half of the same trap is adding three hundred cards in one evening. Anki spreads the repetitions forward, so everything you enter today comes back at the same time in a few days. Twenty new cards per day is plenty.