Try to remember the name of the best book you read last year for once, remember the number of chapters and topics covered, try writing a summary in three lines for each chapter. At which stage did you feel difficulty?
Did you feel your need to return to this book and read it again? Apply the same test to an article you read yesterday, and then to a training related to a skill you use daily in your work, and compare the results.
You now compare forgetfulness curves in each context, and the forgetfulness curve shows how you lose information over time when you are not trying to keep it, or the curve flattens with repetition and training at different intervals. It seems that it is not enough for us to read and learn to add to our knowledge if we want to retrieve what we learned at the time of need.
What is the curve of forgetfulness?
The concept of the "forgetfulness curve" dates back to 1885, when German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus was engaged in conducting an experimental study of his own memory over different time periods, and he relied in his rigorous research on one topic, which is the forgetting rate test and drawing the results that Research and experimentation is shown graphically.
Ebbinghaus found that the information he receives quickly leaks out of his brain within a month. He has forgotten 90% of everything he originally learned, even the results of his research, which he reaches every day. The rate of forgetfulness for something learned for the first time is higher in the first two days, after which the rate of forgetting for main ideas such as the name of a book or the name of the protagonist decreases.
Ebbinghaus’s study was supported by neuroscientists, and they concluded that our brain adopts two policies in dealing with information, either storage and use, or its eventual loss, and whatever the person’s level of learning and training, his brain may work in a context that is completely counterproductive if it adopts a policy of continuous cleaning of all inputs That he endured to collect.
How do you resist forgetfulness?
To change our brain's policy of repelling everything we learn, we need to stick to that information instead of just passing it on, or even repeating it countless times for an hour or a week.
And receiving information is a first stage, in which the information inside our brain stays lost without rules like a haystack in the wind, so it needs you to enhance your brain’s ability to keep it in a repeated process regularly, as a plant that is not sufficient for watering it 10 times a day to live, not once whenever you remember it in a way Random, what really needs is regular watering regularly to grow strong roots and reap its benefits.
To get the fruit of your memory, training and forgetting within your brain, you must work on the second stage after receiving, and its first steps are concerned with the topic of what you receive. You can call the long-term memory instead of the fragile short when you choose content that is relevant to you, whether you are looking at it only because it is in love with it, or because it is your field of work, in both cases the content should have a special meaning inside you, even if its creation is just to see another civilization or language , Change your field, or open a dialogue with friends about it.
All the training you receive on sites that provide scientific courses that you will forget 90% of it, and you will lose the effect that you were hoping if you do not link it with things you already know or work on, which is called effective summoning, as retrieving information and training on it repeatedly regularly every part of the learning process And consolidate information.
Practice writing a shorter version of your article or research. Try to represent your information in a diagram, split the article into several key points, or shoot a video for yourself explaining what you studied during the day, to return to it later.
Be more interactive with what you read, we learn better if we interact with what we receive as opposed to being just passive learners, and we are satisfied with observing the records as it lists information. This comes with interesting gameplay like; If you learn the art of photography, move in your room and reveal its details.
If you are studying an ancient civilization, learn about its arts, imitate it, and compare it with another civilization. If you are learning how to make mobile applications, create applications that meet your needs for use and development, and do not fear experience and failure. We are all beginners in a specific field.