learn fund
- costs of forgetting.
- trust fund for your memory.
We forget information that we do not use frequently, this is known as the forgetting curve.
There are different points on this curve, at the highest point, 100%, you can recall all of the details, you have not forgotten anything. At 0% you cannot recall any of the details, you may even forget that it was something that you have learnt. Somewhere between 0-100% you will be unable to recall all the details. Without intervention the decay of your recall is fast.
Forgetting leads to problems, there are numerous well documented cognitive biases that stem from memory issues that I will not discuss. These are the frustrating problems that I experience with forgetting:
- I lose time looking for the information I have lost.
- I may not even attempt to recover the lost information.
- I may not even remember that this information could help me.
This decreases my productivity.
I also lose some of the initial investment I have made into learning, the time (and/or money) I have spent in the past could have been allocated to something else.
The total cost of forgetting is high: lost time in the present + opportunity cost from the past + lost future productivity gains.
Forgetting is not something that you would generally be able to avoid, particularly if you are learning new things.
Spaced-repetition is a learning technique to "flatten" the forgetting-curve such that there is less/no decline in recall over the long term.
One extremely practical use case of spaced-repetition is for any type of exam. I have used spaced repetition to prepare for all my exams from high school through to university. Similarly, I have used the technique to prepare for technical interviews. Another very common use case for it is for foreign language vocabulary learning.
The technique, and the things you can learn with the technique are applicable outside of the classroom.
Now, I primarily use it to help me retain concepts from new topics or topics that I am idly curious about but don't allocate much attention too.
There are general purpose spaced-repetition apps which help structure this learning technique for you. These apps work by the user adding "flashcards", the app will then structure your review sessions in such a way that is compatible with the forgetting curve.
The overarching idea is that the investment (time spent creating cards + reviewing) gives a higher return than the costs of forgetting.
Anki is the general purpose spaced repetition tool that I use, I create "cloze" cards typically. However different tools can be used or created. Something as simple as a piece of paper that gets reviewed in a "spaced" fashion (5 minutes later, 1 day later, 3 days, 1 week, 1 month, 6 months) is an example of this technique.
I feel a great sense of relief whenever I enter a card into Anki. Over time you begin to trust the process, as you have a solid fallback. The time I have just spent learning is less likely to go to waste, I would like more people to experience this sense of security in learning.
Over the long run you may feel more comfortable taking on a greater load of new material as you become more adept at learning it.
This article may cover some of the questions you may have
Some snippets:
On average, when I’m studying a new topic, I’ll add 3-20 questions a day.
The most difficult task, beyond that of just persisting until the benefits become clear, is deciding what’s valuable enough to add in.
5 minutes and 5 days seems like a memorable enough rule of thumb: ‘don’t use spaced repetition if you need it sooner than 5 days or it’s worth less than 5 minutes’.
Note that spaced-repetition is not a complete substitute for learning materials or other learning techniques, it is complementary. Spaced-repetition is susceptible to diminishing returns. There is value in re-reading ot re-learning cover to cover. There is value in forgetting things too.