I have had scattered preparation during my previous attempts. I was doing everything and still felt I have done nothing in the end. A little bit of answer writing here, a few current affairs classes there, a little bit of ancient, a few time economy, etc. In short, there was no coherence and consolidation in whatever I was doing. I used to feel I know something still I was terrified of appearing for tests. I have waste time chatting on random Telegram study groups which I am completely going to avoid henceforth. It has been a major distraction with no help whatever in proportion to the time we spend on it.
I have decided to complete the syllabus in a coherent manner in this attempt. I will be doing subjects one by one by going through classes and making notes. This is all that I am thinking to do right now. Tests, current affairs, answer writing everything will be done in time but the first priority is to complete the syllabus and have basic notes ready for each.
Till now I have completed Ancient, Medieval, Art & Culture and Modern India. I intend to complete Society and Geography during this month and then I will move to Ethics, Science & Technology, and Economy during November. Polity, Governance, IR will be done in December. Environment, IR, Social Justice in January. This is the minimum I want to complete. This is quite an uphill task and requires a lot of effort given that I am working but I'm willing to put in effort into the same.
Another question is do you keep a single deck for all subjects or have a different deck for each subject. It became unmanageable for me to everyday revise 150+ scheduled cards spread across multiple decks.
I have been on an erratic schedule. Completed one lecture of Social Justice and could not revise anything.
Here are my targets for 19-Oct
- Social Justice - Women Issues (Complete 2 Lectures)
- Revision of Bhakti & Sufi Movement and Architecture from my notes.
- Revision of Units 1 and 2 of optional by going through the notes.
- 2 Lectures of Society
- Architecture and Paintings revision from Art and Culture notes
- First two units of optional
The target is a little ambitious given I'm starting late today and have other work-related commitments. I will try to complete the maximum.
Hey, I use a deck for each topic in each subject. For example, today I made cards for Simon Commission and Boycott movement. Instead of typing long answers, I click a photo of the relevant page. I make Questions from mains pov, and use the subject name as a tag. I just started using Anki, so I don’t know how it’ll work out eventually
While there is no one way to use Anki, these are some of the stuff that I can tell you can go be improved/ done differently.
One deck for each topic for each subject isn't too helpful. This is something I am writing by my own experience and through my experience interacting with Anki community on Reddit too. In the beginning, I had one deck for each subject. That too was too much. The more random the sequence of cards we get to recall, the better. Right now, I have one deck for GS- Pre, one deck for GS-Mains (only stuff that goes into it are stuff to learn from final consolidated notes for each topic), One for PSIR, except IR & one for IR. One more stuff for Dumping when I don't want to categorize the information at the moment. Also, I have read that Anki may start acting weirdly with too many decks and may affect the scheduling of card recall.
Now, every card has to be given appropriate tags so that you can edit/view cards you need. So, a simon commision card should be given tags like MIH, GS1, Freedom-Struggle.
Also, flashcards are better when each card carries minimum information possible. This is called as, as you can guess, minimum information principle. That quickens reviews and that is also a better way to study because flashcards are for remembering the factual stuff. Now, the paragraphs that you are copy pasting can be pasted in the extra 'remarks' tab that is given to you. This can be helpful to refer stuff without actually going to source material. So, suppose today, I read some op-ed in the hindu. And it says, x report says that there are y number of people suffering from something. You make a reversible basic card ( which will make two cards):
Side 1: X report on something ???
Side 2: Y number of people suffer from something (Source???)
Or
Side 1: Data on something
Side 2: X Reports says Y......
Here, you will be asked to revise both the sides by presenting you the other side. In the tab remark, you paste the paragraph from the op-ed so that you get the context if you are lost.
Alternatively, you can use cloze deletions too.
About two decades ago, a guy called Piotr Wozniak formulated what are called the Supermemo rules for Knowledge Formulation. Do go through them once in a while to constantly remind yourself that you may be making your job more difficult by breaking those rules. I have made thousands of cards only to delete them after a point because they became so unwieldy. And it will take so much time to review them too after a point.
https://supermemo.guru/wiki/20_rules_of_knowledge_formulation
My top advice would be to fastidiously follow minimum information rule, tag everything nicely, learn what kind of information is best for which kind of cards (like there is an addon called overlapping cloze that can be used for mugging up lists, quotes). Less the decks, the better it is. Make cards on desktop/laptop, review on mobile (enable touch gestures).
Also, if someone has taken the leap to make the best use of Anki & are a little lost, I advice you to go through the 4 hour skillshare course on Anki by Ali Abdaal. You make skip most of it, but you will find something that can make your life easier. It is available on torrents for free. If you don't find it, DM me maybe.
That said, rules are meant to be broken, everyone is different, no size fits all. What I just wrote is conventional wisdom.
Thank you so much. I was wondering if there were some basic principles one needs to know to use Anki. This post has given me a perspective. The point about making cards based on final consolidated notes instead of everything one comes across makes sense. I'm going to start applying these principles now. :)
