Image source: https://github.com/glutanimate/review-heatmap

One of the common traits of people who manage to get extraordinarily results in the things that they do is that they show up consistently doing the work, whether they feel like it or not.

Motivation can come and go, but they simply show up and do the work. That’s also true with studying. You can try to cram as much information as possible a day or two before an exam, or simply prepare for an interview, but chances are that a considerable portion of that learning will be forgotten in just a few days.

That’s where spaced repetition comes in. When you space out your learning of something in multiple days, you are much more likely to learn and recall that thing later on.

Anki is a really great spaced-repetition based application that you can use both on your computer via the desktop client, or on your smartphone while you are on your commute or simply interested to practice waiting for your friends to come.

Although you may be very active using Anki, you may have not had a visual impression of the sessions that you have performed so far. As such, you want to see the days in which you practiced answering questions, and also keep up the consistency.

Meet Review HeatMap, a free Anki add on that helps with that. It’s really simple and very easy to install. On top of that, there is no need for any manual labour on your side to help with the visualizations, or doing daily check-ins.

It works on the background by getting the usage data that you have logged so far using Anki and then visualizes the days you used Anki.

You can see in there the daily average number of cards, days learned, longest streak and current streak that you are at.

It also gives a visual impression of the previous days, when you did not have this add on installed.

On top of all that, it’s also open source, so you can learn how does it work and modify based on your needs.

You can also watch the video demonstration from the developer of this plugin.

That’s it from my side. I hope you find it helpful in your learning.