Deep knowledge is no longer valuable. Shallow, fast, and actionable information is more effective in getting the job done.
What's the point of reading all these books, posts, and blogs if you're going to forget most of them in just a few hours?
Is there an easy way to keep information in our heads longer?
And how has the Internet negatively affected the quality of memory we have now?
According to Lifehack, our memory is flawed, and researchers estimate that we lose 90% of everything we learn once we learn it, and when our brains start absorbing new information, there is a limited amount of time before this information becomes useless to us.
For many reasons, our brains are in a constant process of forgetting.
You lose most of the details you've learned after a short time, because your brain space is limited, and your brain doesn't actually know how to determine if the details will be useful to you later, so it simply forgets.
In the age of the Internet, the ability to automatically recall information in your mind has become less important (pixels).
oblivion curve
German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus discovered the forgetting curve, a concept that postulates a decline in the retention of information in memory in time.
The forgetting curve is steeper on the first day, and it can be said that after just one hour the human brain forgets more than half of the information it receives.
So if you don't revise what you have recently learned, you will likely forget most of the material and your memory will continue to deteriorate in the following days, leaving only a tiny bit of information at the end.
As for the impact of the current era on our memory, according to an article published on Mystudentvoices, Jared Horvath, a researcher at the University of Melbourne in Australia, says that the way people consume information and even entertainment has now changed the type of memory we have. .
Recognition memory not retrieve
A 'retrieval' memory is the ability to automatically recall information in your mind, and in the age of the Internet, retrieval has become less important.
Horvath says that the so-called "recognition" memory is becoming more important, so as long as you know where this information is and how to access it, you don't really need to remember it.
We have come to treat the Internet as a hard disk of our memories;
We know that if we ever need a piece of information, we can open our laptop and search for it right away.
Just-in-time learning is becoming increasingly popular because it's more efficient, so you can search for the information you need right away instead of storing information that might be useful in the future.
Deep knowledge is no longer valuable. Shallow, fast, and actionable information is more effective in getting the job done.
Because we know that we have an external memory, we put less effort into memorizing the concepts and ideas we learn, and forgo fully understanding them.
Research has shown that the Internet acts as a kind of external memory, “when people expect to have easy access to information, their rates of remembering the same information are lower.
When you read something you want to remember, take notes that ask questions (pixels)
Insatiable consumption makes us lose memory
We are also becoming more prone to binge-watching with the emergence of easily consuming media.
Have you ever stayed home on a Friday night and watched an entire season of your favorite show?
Will you be able to remember the story of each episode?
Will you be able to remember details, problems, and solutions?
Binge-watching encourages you to consume content without thinking.
Horvath and colleagues at the University of Melbourne found that those who binge-watched TV programs forgot their content much more quickly than people who watched one episode per week, and also reported that they enjoyed the show less than people who watched it once daily or weekly.
Binge-reading has also become the most common type of reading. We read, especially on the Internet, just to get information;
Information that is not likely to become knowledge because it will not remain in our brains.
How do we retain the things we have already learned?
Revision Basically you need to give yourself time to absorb the things you have learned.
As memories get stronger, Horvath says, keep reviewing the bits of information you want to keep with you.
Write about it. You will often find that when you learn something interesting and write about it, you will be able to remember the information more easily than if you were trying to remember something you learned once in a book or article somewhere.
False fluency. Often when we read there is a sense of false fluency. Information flows, we understand it, and it seems to build up seamlessly in a file that gets lodged in our brains, but in reality it only persists if you put effort into it, focus, and engage in certain strategies that will help you memory.
People may do this when they are studying or reading something for work, but it seems unlikely that in their spare time they will take notes to test themselves later.
Repetition If you are studying for a test or trying to learn a complex formula or concept, refer to the same information.
Each time you revisit the topic you are trying to learn, the idea reinforces in your long-term memory.
Test yourself. Give yourself a few hours and try to remember the information on your own without looking at the study material. If you feel stuck, read the formula or concept again and try to remember again after a few hours.
The more you practice this, the more likely you are to be able to retain and retrieve the information in the future.
You need to give yourself time to absorb the things you've learned (Pixels)
What is the best way to learn?
When you read something you want to remember, take notes that ask questions, and then, test yourself on the questions you prepared earlier.
Doing so will strengthen your retrievable memory so that information is easier to access when you need it.
To make this exercise as practical as possible, do not try to test yourself too hard on every little bit of knowledge in the book.
Trying to remember every possible fact will make reading so boring that it may even kill your love of reading.