Suyin Aerts
December 18, 2020

Memory

My daughters are in second year of high school, Latin. And I have the feeling as if I do not remember anything of what I learned. As yes at their age I was doing the same studies. Bizar? Normal? I do not know.

But I once read this : An approach to overcoming the forgetting curve is the 50/50 rule. Dedicate 50% of your time to learning anything new and the rest of your time to sharing or explaining what you have learned to others. I did not explain any Latin to anyone so in that case it is normal I forgot most of it.

And honestly I think that is really valuable. Often they say if someone cannot explain you in an easy way what something is about they did not understand it themselves.

Our brains are busier than ever before. We’re consistently exposed to facts, pseudo-facts, notifications, and rumor, all posing as information. Information overload means we are processing more data than ever before.

And the brain is consistently in the business of sorting what to keep and what to forget. If you want to improve your retention rate, take control of the process and reinforce the new information deliberately, something else I read…and I do agree.

Maybe I prefer to be a smart person, maybe not remembering everything I once learned but often making connections that seem obvious to me, but perplexing to others — simply because I might have developed the skill of “zooming out” to get a better view of the big picture.

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