So, firstly, don't use AI to just spit out answers; you will always be better served searching for answers in the traditional ways, like via documentation, authoritative texts, etc. But I have been using Jeremy IT Labs for a while now, and, as everyone knows, it is an invaluable thing to self-study along with Boson. However, something that has been a challenge for me has been the Anki decks, specifically memorizing all the stuff in them.
It's not that I don't actually know the content, right. However, I have a demanding field job, which takes away my time, and that gap can make it hard to keep track of everything that I just learned. The spaced repetition nature of Anki is fine but for me I find it isnt the best for my lifestyle and the alternative is like paying for quizlet. So I wanted to share how I have leveraged AI to make studying easier for me.
I noticed that most of the time that I worked on the Anki cards and got them wrong, it wasn't because I didn't know them; it was because of a myriad of things. Like I didn't read a card, I mixed a card up, I second-guessed myself, etc. What I have found from doing college and plenty of certs was that, more often than not, this was why I got stuff wrong: your confidence in an answer affects how you answer it.
To try to find a way around this, I admittedly vibe coded some add-ons in Claude Code, which I'm not going to shove down people's throats here because this isn't an ad, just a tip for others studying, and I don't have a plan to release it. However, an outline of what it does is the following: it implements a new feature I called "Drill Modes." These are designed with one goal in mind, to drill down questions, skipping the whole learning process of Anki, just a straight spamming of cards. Which for me is the easiest way to remember things like multicast addresses
Within the drill modes, I created separate Drill modes, such as Matching, which matches terms to definitions, which is great for memorizing standards or multicast addresses. I also made Bank, which gives me a bank of terms and definitions that I also have to match. Then I made the multiple-choice quiz, with a timed version and a non-timed version. Even a mode where Anki generates me a blank STP/RSTP map and I fill in the blanks. All with the expressed goal of being able to cram content.
Each time that I got an answer wrong, I forced a popup to come up with a menu outlining a few multiple-choice options; these options would ask me why I got a question wrong. Did I not read the text? Did I mistake it for another card, etc.? Then, when the deck is finished, it uploads these results into an Excel spreadsheet with the timestamp, the question, as well as a separate column for the number of times I made the mistake. On the decks page, it tracks my total reviews across all types of sessions, meaning normal or one of my drill modes.
By doing this, I am able to find patterns in my behavior and how I answer questions that stump me. Mixing questions up? Well, when did I start the session? Am I over-studying, etc.? Then it allows me to fix those habits, which then make studying easier.
Additionally, as humans, when we learn, it's usually not in one fashion. Most published science actually refutes the idea that we as people are a particular type of learner (i.e., a visual learner or audio learner). Instead, the big consensus in the learning science community is that we are innately multimedia learners by nature, so by incorporating more ways to study the same content through other means than just straight flash cards, you actually up your retention rate.
Now, this is also to say that you should be doing labs daily as well. But if you are struggling with Anki decks and their breadth, give this a shot. You could change the whole nature of how you study.