Theory - Spaced Repetition
If you were wondering why I placed the quizzes for the next day, you'll understand why with the theory of Spaced Repetition.
Take a moment to analyze the following graph:
If you do not recall what you have learned, you basically follow the forgetting curve. If you retain 70 percent of what you learned right after you learn it, within 24 hours you’re already at about 20 percent, and within a week, you’re at less than 10 percent.
This is cause for alarm, no?
Part of the reason you have homework in school is to partially help with that, putting you in the “Review 2” curve, increasing your retention by at least six times!
Isn’t it amazing?
So, when you practice something you’ve learned after 24 hours, then after one week, and then after one month, you’ll basically retain your learning for years to come. It takes such a minimal amount of time for you, yet the results are phenomenal.
So, the next time you schedule a learning session, think about spaced repetition and place “recalling sessions” in your calendar as well. That’s how, after not doing any video editing in a while, I’m able to just get back into it and remember how it’s done.
To help you facilitate the process, you can use apps like Anki.
For example, this course contains a lot of information. No one can assimilate all its concepts in a single sitting. This is meant to be frequently reviewed over the next few weeks.
A strategy you can employ to retain most of the information here is that for every concept you read today, mark your calendar to read it again 24 hours from now, seven days from now, and a month from now. Here’s an example (see the blue “Learning” label?):
I know this sounds overkill, but if you’re serious about learning something, trust me, you save a lot more time doing it this way because you will forever retain it.
All this is based on neuroscience, which we'll explore in another blitz course on Learning and the Brain. For now, know that this helps move information from the working memory to the short-term memory, and finally into the long-term memory.