Better Anki Learning Steps

I’ve been playing around with Anki, the spaced repetition application, A LOT in the last few weeks. This will certainly not be the last post about Anki, but I’ll start with a simple reference post for me to remember where I learned how Anki’s learning steps work.

Check out this video:

It explains

1. the different types of cards in Anki,
2. how learning intervals are calculated,
3. what the ease and interval modifiers are,
4. what the ease factor is, and
5. how answers modify the interval.

It also talks in depth about “Ease Hell”, what it is, and how to avoid it.

Now I finally understand what Anki’s Learning Phase is all about (12:34), and how to best use it. Money quote:

Answering a card incorrectly in the learning phase does not change its ease factor.

The proposed settings for the Learning Phase are:

• Steps (minutes): 15 1440 8640
• Graduating Interval (days): 15

These numbers are based on the SuperMemo 2 algorithm (18:34), which is what Anki is actually using, just not with sane default. Watch the whole video for more details. It’s worth it!