Often when I talk to friends or colleagues, I will ask them “what are you reading” and I get some great book recommendations from this question.
My colleague recommended to me Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath and a week or so after finishing the book he asked me what stuck for me. I was surprised at how little I remembered.
Hermann Ebbinghaus in the late 1800’s did research on what is called the “forgetting curve”. He found that after 20 minutes of learning something you lose the ability to recall nearly 50% of what you learned. The more that time passes, the more you forget. This research then led to the spacing effect to increase retention and learning.
In my experience of forgetting many aspects of the book I read in such a short period of time it I thought, there must be a way I can systematically build in spaced learning, so I have greater retention and application of the things I learn.
I do not know how to do this yet. How would you build in a process that enables greater retention of material you are learning? Please share with me your thoughts, I would love to hear them!
