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Can you remember what a book you read two months ago was about? There is a high chance that you can’t even recall half of the book’s content. Or have you ever forgotten important knowledge you heard from a
podcast? If you have done either of these things, this article is for you. Recently, a huge amount of effort and resources have gone into helping people increase their knowledge to improve their lifestyles. So today, we would like to share two techniques, active recall and spaced repetition, that will make achieving those goals easier.
The best way to understand active recall is to compare it with traditional studying methods. Normally, students reread their notes and rewatch recorded lectures to input information into their brains. However, with active recall we try to retrieve information from our brain instead. To use this method, you have to ask yourselves questions and try to fish out the answers.
The spaced repetition technique is based on the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve. The idea is that people forget a large part of what they recently learned within the first day of learning it. To retain more memories, we have to break this forgetting curve by reinforcing the knowledge just when it is about to slip away.
One of the popular variations of this method is to revise your knowledge after 1, 7, 16, and 35 days. This method accomplishes two jobs at once. First, it prevents you from forgetting the knowledge. Second, it strengthens the memory so that you are less likely to lose it in the future.
We can see why the first component works, but we might need more explanation to understand the second one. The second component is possible because of the Theory of Disuse. To understand this theory, you need to understand that the ability to recall information depends on two other abilities: storage ability and retrieval ability. Storage ability is quite straightforward; the more someone reads the same information, the stronger the storage strength becomes.
However, there is a twist with retrieval ability. Although recalling something strengthens retrieval ability, recalling it when you have almost forgotten it has the strongest effect. In other words, being able to retrieve something you almost forgot will make memory and retrieval ability much stronger. This is why we have to look at the forgetting curve and determine the point at which information will almost be lost.
Remember that to strengthen retrieval ability, you don’t just read the information, you need to retrieve the information from your mind. This is where active recall comes in. In the most basic form, you need to perform active recall in an interval set by spaced repetition. This way, your retrieval strength will be increased at the right interval and in the right way.
Keep these two techniques in mind and try to use them the next time you see some important information. You will be surprised by how well they work! We hope you have a great time improving yourself, learning new knowledge, and enjoying your life.
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