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Use repetition to reinforce your knowledge

An objective of many of the techniques in this book is to reduce the reliance on rote repetition as a primary learning technique. However, repetition is still a fundamental part of learning any new material.

The key to effective repetition though is spaced repetition. Let’s look at why. Look at the first graph below. It shows three ways you could learn a simple skill through repetition. These three ways are to spread sixty repetitions across one session a day, one session a week or one session a fortnight. The graph is over a four-week period.

For the “one session a week” and “one session a fortnight” approaches, you have something working against you. Review the text box on page 76 and you will see what it is. If you exceed a certain number of repetitions in a single learning session, the extra repetitions have little effect on overall recall. The shaded line across the middle of the graph marks this trait of memory. Any more repetitions above this line in a single session are not effective.

The next graph shows the overall effect of this trait. It shows the total effective repetitions over the four weeks.

This graph shows the overall effectiveness of each of the three approaches—one session a day, a week and a fortnight. As you can see (for this example), doing one session a day is twice as effective as one session a week. One session a day is more than three times as effective as one session a fortnight. Keep in mind the overall number of repetitions over the four weeks is the same—sixty repetitions. While this is a simple example, it provides strong support for spreading repetitions over time.

One item to note from this example is the number of possible effective repetitions in a day depends on many factors. These include the complexity of your activities, the time for each repetition, the type of knowledge you are learning, and others.

Let’s look at how you can apply this principle in your own learning. Three tips are to spread repetition, use the Memletic Techniques to support repetition, and to reduce repetition over time.

Spread repetitions

As you can see, short periods of repetition each day can significantly improve your overall retention. In addition, this example does not consider the impact of forgetting on the “once a week” and “once a fortnight” examples. You’ll see more on this in a moment when we discuss refresh reviews.

Doing ten minutes of a learning activity once a day is often better than doing an hour a week. An hour a week though is better than doing a four-hour session once a month, or an all-night cramming session right before an exam.

Spread repetition to be as frequent as practical. Looking at the first graph above, doing repetitions every two or three days should be just as effective as every day (for this example). This is because you are not going above the effective repetition line.

Use the Memletic Techniques to support repetition

Find ways to do repetitions using suitable Memletic Techniques. If for example you do flying training once a week, you can still benefit from using a simulator or visualization for short periods during the week. The same applies in a wide range of other training topics.

You can also use general performance techniques outlined in the “Perform” section of the Memletic Techniques chapter. Two specific examples include:

·  Introduce variety and interference. Use the Task Variation technique and the Task Interference technique during your repetitions. These not only improve your retention and skill level, they also help reduce the monotony of repetitions.

·  Use overlearning. Go beyond the standard number of repetitions to keep knowledge for longer. Spread these out over time though. If you do too many at once they may not be effective.

Reduce repetition over time

As time progresses (and your knowledge increases), you can lessen the frequency of repetition. For example, for the week after learning new material you might repeat a learning technique each day. For the second week, you might do two or three sessions with one or two repetitions in each session. In the third week, you may incorporate the material into a review session in which you only perform the repetition once. At the fifth week, you do a review session once a week for a few weeks, before then falling back to once a month. You are now into the “refresh review” area (covered soon), and so you may now review your material once a quarter, and eventually even less than that. By this time, the knowledge should be firmly in your long-term memory.

This repetition approach assumes you are not using what you’ve learned in regular activities. For example, you may not need to repeat an exercise to improve your eye contact with an audience, if you are presenting regularly and using that skill.

This amount of repetition may seem excessive. The various techniques in this book, as well as future advances, can help reduce our reliance on repetition. However, it’s the primary way we commit information to long-term memory. Use the techniques in this book for more effective repetition, and your learning performance will improve enormously.