THE PROBLEM

Forget what?

Trying to recall the information in that training you took yesterday?

Not so easy is it.

That red line is your problem.

It’s called the Forgetting Curve. It shows you how fast you forget.

The fact is, as Hermann Ebbinghaus proved over a century ago, post-learning there is a:

• Steep initial drop: Without reinforcement, a huge portion of new information is forgotten within a few hours to a day.

• Gradual decline: After the initial loss, the rate of forgetting slows down but continues.

That red dot is your nightmare.

Yes, unless you take action, from the time you take the training to 1 day after you can forget about 50% of what you learned.

Actually, you forget it because you didn’t actually learn it.

You merely read or watched or did it.

Actual learning = encoding.

Encoding means you hardwired it into your memory. Which means you can recall it easily.

Here’s an example of the difference between learning and encoding:

You feel the difference between learning and encoding when you move to a new address. You know your old address by heart. Any time day or night I could pour a bucket of ice water over your head and ask you to recite your old address?

You have it in memory ready to go.

But your new address?

That takes time.

For weeks you’re changing bills and updating accounts and almost every time…there you go looking up that new address again.

Do that enough and you have it memorized. You’re ready for the ice bucket with that new address on the tip of your tongue again.

It’s the same thing with all that training you have to do for work—or for any other info you have to pass the ice bucket test with.

Considering how much you have to know for work. You should have a plan for how you get to the ice bucket level. A plan based on proven science.

Luckily I read the research papers. Here’s that plan.

But before that? Here’s the ice bucket test in action.