What do successful people do differently?
They push themselves to learn new information and gain new skills. It’s an important part of a lifelong and ongoing process. They prioritize learning as a key part of their personal and professional progress.
And if you want to remain competitive in your career and take advantage of new opportunities, you will want to adopt a similar viewpoint.
But here’s another question: How quickly do you forget new information?
Read on, as the answer might surprise you!
The Forgetting Curve
If you read a book, listen to a podcast, or skim a newsletter, you quickly forget much of that information. Within the first hour, retention drops to 44%. Within the first 24 hours, it drops to 33%. And within the first week, only 10% sticks with you!
This steep decline is known as the forgetting curve. It can make mastering new knowledge and skills slow and frustrating. It can lead to demotivation, especially when it feels as though you are making such little progress.
If you want to stay competitive, though, you need to learn continuously. It needs to be more than a habit, as you adopt a strategy to fight against the forgetting curve.
And this is the reason that an afternoon of training is often useless. Although props are deserved for the intention, follow up, review, and regular practice must go hand in hand.
Spaced Repetition
An effective method to better retain information is spaced repetition. This learning technique incorporates intervals between learning to improve long-term retention.
For example, instead of studying for an hour once per week, spaced repetition not only includes review but also breaks the learning into smaller chunks. You revisit information.
Putting It Into Practice
So how does this look in practice?
- Take notes as you read, listen to a podcast, etc. This will be the information that you want to retain.
- Within 24 hours, review the notes. Ideally, you should review sooner than 24 hours for better retention, but often this isn’t possible. Learning should be fun, and we don’t need an additional stressor added to the busyness of our lives.
- Mark any information which wasn’t well remembered, as this highlights information which wasn’t retained.
- Recall the information, working through your notes.
- Repeatedly review your notes 24-36 hours later.
Admittedly, these steps are a simplified, analog version. However, They are a good place to start.
If you want to harness the full power of spaced repetition, I recommend apps like Anki or Quizlet. Information that you didn’t remember appears more frequently, while other information that you retained appears less. This supercharges your learning and retention, maximizing efficiency. It also allows you to do microbursts of review on the go.
Pro point!: Embrace your failures.
Missteps and failures indicate what skills and knowledge you lack. And when you welcome the opportunity to learn from failure, you also create an environment that favors learning over perfection.
Effective Learning for the Team
The same learning and forgetting holds true for your team too.
I have written about the importance of learning in Create a Culture of Learning and also addressed the need for coaching in Why Don’t Managers Coach.
New challenges, regular feedback, and ongoing coaching are musts. And any one-and-done training will not provide the expected results without returning to the information again and again.
Wrapping Up
It’s more than making learning an integral and enjoyable part of your professional development. It also needs to be done effectively, and spaced repetition and regular review makes it possible.
I’ll close with a quote from Michelangelo, who perhaps best serves as an example. At 87, he said: “Ancora Imparo. Still, I am learning.”