Motivation

is a program which makes remembering things easy.

You can find a more thorough description in the above webpage, but tl;dr…it’s a software for simulating someone (your mum/dad, a friend…) testing your knowledge on something: you are asked some question, you think (no need to verbalize) the answer, and (when ready) you check the correct answer. Then you need to tell Anki how it went: fine (you knew the answer), super-easy (you didn’t even hesitate), hard (you were not right but close), need-to-check-that-again (you got no clue). Now, Anki will ask you again, and more often, those questions you found more trouble with. The cool part is that this is scheduled according to the sm2 algorithm, which relies on scientific evidence about long-term memory.

Setup

You need two things:

Anki software
a deck of cards

Software

Anki is multiplatform, (Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, Mac), though I have only tested it on Linux and Android (AnkiDroid Flashcards). A smartphone client is very handy, and is the option I recommend.

IOS

There are some Anki clients in the Apple Store. However, they are not free. An alternative is to use AnkiWeb (see below) directly in the smartphone’s browser. It is mobile-optimized and the experience is similar to using a native app.

Deck of cards

Importing a deck

AnkiDroid

Option 1 (the easy way if you have already installed the app)

download the deck’s .apkg file using the appropriate link
once the download is complete, tap the Open button/link Android will show along with the notification
choose Anki as the app to open that file (it is possible that Android will not even ask you this if the only app associated with .apkg files is Android)

Option 2

launch the app
in the main screen (where you can see all the decks you have imported so far) tap the three vertical dots on the top right of the screen
choose Import
navigate to whatever the .apkg file is, select it, and confirm

Linux

launch Anki
in the File menu, choose Import
navigate to whatever the .apkg file is, select it, and confirm

AnkiWeb (optional)

AnkiWeb is a web interface for Anki which is great for synchronizing your learning progress across different devices (e.g, your desktop computer and your smartphone). You can sign up for free and, afterwards, use your new credentials in any other Anki client (Linux, Android…) that you want to keep in sync. AnkiWeb also allows you to study your decks directly from the browser. However, one major drawback is that it doesn’t allow (yet) to import decks. For that you use some other Anki client (e.g., the Anki desktop client) that is in sync with AnkiWeb and, afterwards, the deck will also show up in the latter.