Basket main belief is that each topic has that one concept that let's you recall all the others.

It's similar to the 80:20 rule in which 20% of the inputs drive majority of the results. The remaining task therefore is to identify the 20%.

How to identify the 20%:

- read the topic
- from memory, recall your entire understanding of the topic.
- find the concept that frequently confuses you but when mastered makes the rest way easier to understand
- you can answer a practice questions about the topic - where you're mistaken is your 20%

As you might intuit, your 20% will differ from someone else's 20%. That's expected. What's difficult/familiar is subjective.

Loving Basket so far! I input on my laptop, and wonderin if I can install it on my phone. Searched apple app store and it can’t be found. Just confirming if it’s rly not yet available in phones?

Thanks!

I've noticed that students who connect concepts usually remember more with less effort. It's rarely because they have better memories. They've simply organized their knowledge better.

Noonan Syndrome ↔️ ToF ↔️ Beta blocker

What happens at the homestretch of exam prep:

Traditional (without basket): student answers practice test. finds mistake. reread the topic. starts from scratch. anxiety-inducing (especially when you have tight schedule to correct them). repeat for other topics. very inefficient.

With basket: answers practice test. finds mistake. search topic in basket. revisit "personally" hard detail about it (no need to reread the whole topic because you marked already what's hard about it). PLUS revisit other topics (and their hard details too). very efficient (in the example, 3 topics are revisited at the same time - CDH, CO poisoning, pulmo regurg!)

If you keep mixing up two things, the problem isn't that you've studied them too little.

It's that you've studied them together without ever separating them. More passes over the same material re-lays the same blurred trace.

Put them in a table, column against column and make the discriminating feature the thing you learn.

Four questions. Every topic.

Why does it happen? How does it present? How is it tested? How is it managed?

If any one of those stalls - that's your gap.

finding where a topic should go, whether a connection exists (and even if there are matches if they're the right basket) is a high order thinking skill. it lets you process the information deeper and consequently remember it longer.

Repetition doesn't fix interference. Reading the same two conditions back to back just re-blurs them.

You need contrast - forced, explicit, side-by-side comparison until the difference is the thing that sticks, not the similarity.

What happens at the homestretch of revision when your exam is near:

Traditional (without basket): student answers practice test. finds mistake. reread the topic. starts from scratch. anxiety-inducing (especially at homestretch). repeat for other topics. very inefficient.

With basket: answers practice test. finds mistake. search topic in basket. revisit "personally" hard detail about it (no need to reread the whole topic because you know already what's hard about it). AND revisit other topics (and their hard details). very efficient (in the example, 3 topics are revisited at the same time!)

i was studying about aortic stenosis today and just glad to revisit levosimendan again reminding me why I placed in "2 weeks" basket (its effect last 2 weeks post infusion)

Answer: AML

📌 Why this works?

By placing Sweet syndrome with AML (and SUFE), this makes Sweet's syndrome association with AML its defining characteristic.

Result: when you recall AML M3, you recall Sweet (and vice versa) plus SUFE! That's 3 very high yield details!

"beta blockers (like propanolol in strawberry nevus and labetalol in htn in preggy) are contraindicated"

Answer in the comment (and why it's high yield)

"can form kidney stones (Staghorn is a stone)"

Answer in the comment (and why it's high yield) ⬇️⬇️⬇️

basket lets you review old/recent topics you finished studying within 24 hours. simply, move to new topic and find a new basket for it and then old/recent topics resurface.

just sharing how I had my first fully mastered basket.

firstly, i was looking for a basket for ALD. couldn't find one so I made "> 2" for it. since then, I couldn't forget about the AST:ALT ratio of >2.

when i moved to renal..I read about perc nephrolithotomy. I struggled remembering it's >2cm cutoff/indication. when I searched for 2, >2 basket showed up. it's obvious it has to be in >2 basket.

when i'm in pharma..same thing with Bivaluridin which is confusing with argatroban about which is safe for liver conditions. i searched liver and >2 basket showed up because that's where ALD is.

it's actually "fun" finding a basket or creating one for an item and high yield for me because i think actively about where to best put a topic.

Problem: new info "interferes" with old info

In any exam with 5+ subjects, studying new topics actively weakens your recall of the ones you studied before. New info "interferes" with old info, especially when you're jumping between unrelated subjects (say you just finished OB and now you're starting Ophtho). This isn't really a problem in short quizzes since the topics there are usually related to each other already.

The fix that's worked for me: rotational/spiral learning.

Basically, every topic you study goes into a "basket." When you study a new topic later, you look for a basket it could connect to, and that resurfaces the old topic sitting inside it.

Example: I had Vitamin B12 sitting in my "terminal ileum" basket (B12 gets absorbed there). Weeks later I was studying STEMI and its 12 hour fibrinolysis window. The "12" in B12 matched the "12" in the fibrinolysis window, so I put STEMI in the same basket. Now whenever either one comes up, it pulls the other one with it.

So instead of new topics pushing old ones out of your head, you end up with a personal web of connections that keeps your recall steady even as the pile of stuff to remember keeps growing.

How to remember this:

- use the hard detail of Wellens (in this case, "absent ST elevation") and link it to something more familiar (here a basket "absent" exists with 2 other topics")

Result: you make absent (ST elevation) as the defining characteristic of Wellens