No more Pleco. Anki moving forward.

My strategy for this Study Leave was to migrate from PLECO to ANKI. I theorized that Migrating from Pleco to Anki would save me 1 hour a day of study time, from my usual 4 hours. Although I feel like I’ll realize that in 2-3 months. 

Why I believe it will save me 1 hour a day, of my 4 hours of studying. 

  • Dealing with Leeches. Anki allows me to better deal with my Leeches or Toxic Memory or Interference. I can better customize a card and add more memory triggers like visualization. The app identifies Leeches. 
    • Leeches are probably only 5% of my time impact but it reduces FLOW and thus while it affects 5% of my material, every time it stops me I’m distracted and need to context switch. 
    • I believe the time per card will reduce as I deal with leeches.  
  • I can reduce my studying technical debt. Systematic Problems in my studies can be better addressed with the customized features of Anki. 
    • I’ve realized that I’ve forgotten a lot of Cards, it was a Mistake to Allow my Cards to reach Scores of greater than 100 days between next review. Until I have regular Chinese Interactions every day I cannot assume I learned the word the way I learned the words I used in my daily vocabulary. 
    • The Dashboards allow me to see trends, and it even creates forecasts of what I’m going to study. 
    • I can create Custom Study Sessions Based on Tags. Buying down Technical Debt is Key. 
  • One app for Everything means One app that has all my Context and Studies. 

Pleco’s use. 

Pleco is great for the beginner and the 3,000php or 65usd I spent. 
  • The dictionary is more detailed than Google Translate. But Google Translate has Word frequency analysis. 
  • The Flashcard system is great for a Beginner, you dont want to spend MONTHS learning ANKI before you start using it. USE an SRS system, WHILE you are studying ANKI. 
  • For Context a Lesson in the 孔子学院 is about 5,000php or 100usd. these classes are 1:20 teacher to student ratio. Language has to be used and feedback driven. I did not get the feedback I needed without interrupting the class. The App is a big help even with its limitations and far better than class. Until we have AI that we can Talk to naturally Humans will have to rely on SRS flashcards. 

the limit of PLECO dashboard. This is it. Ankis Dashboard is overwhelming for a beginner but over time, in the course of the 4 months I’ve been migrating I was able to get the hang of it. 

Jay Duggar has been instrumental to my migration. I believe another person would have had x2-x4 times more difficulty migrating without a guide who’s experienced the system and has a working understanding of it.

I want to pay it forward to help others, by giving feedback, to those who also want to use Pleco for studying for Work and Languages. Although I dont know where I can “leave my contact details” for those who need coaching.

Yesterdays Progress

  1. Used Audacity to Break up the HSK 02 Exam Audio into each Line Item. 
  2. I will make an ANKI of each, hopefully overwriting the old ones. 
  3. The hard part is the Transcription, which I managed to do about 6. there are about 350 lines scripts I have to transcribe in Chinese. I believe it will take me a LONG time to do this. I bet 5 minutes per line. I believe 295 lines will take me about 1470 minutes and thus 24 hours. I should just set aside those hours carefully. 
  4. I will focus on my PMI CAPM studies by next week. 

Leave a Reply

More Articles & Posts