Finally one afternoon you decide to start studying. This is a new subject and it is the first time you open the book. You set yourself the goal of reading the first chapter on that first day of study. You start reading and everything sounds like Chinese to you.
Your head fills with multitude of concepts that you've never heard before. You have to make a tremendous effort to continue reading. Each paragraph is full of unknown information that you have to assimilate. You keep reading and it seems that little by little you are learning something.
You come to the end of the topic and close the book. You are somewhat dizzy from bingeing on new information. Still you feel satisfied because you think you have taken advantage of the afternoon. You could even explain to someone what you just studied.
However, the days go by and all that new information that you have acquired begins to disappear. An increasingly thick cloud comes between you and the information. A week later, you are barely able to remember any of those difficult names. Let's not talk about trying to define them or remember their relationship with the rest of the concepts. Everything has disappeared as if by magic.
Well, magic has little to do with it here. This whole process of forgetting is not new, in fact it has been known since the 19th century thanks to the study of The Curve of Oblivion. Understanding how this curve works is the best way to prevent the previous situation from happening again..
The forgetting curve explains how we retain the information we study. All your calculations are based on 1 hour of study.
Next I will describe what happens with this curve from the first day we start to study until the following days.
This is your first day of study. You start with a knowledge of 0% (that is, you know absolutely nothing about the subject) and at the end of the study you gain a knowledge of 100%. This is not to say that you have suddenly become an expert. 100 is the maximum measure that you have achieved as soon as you close the book. For some people this 100 may be more loaded with information than for others. It all depends on the degree of concentration you have devoted to that hour of study.
If during this day you do nothing to remember what you learned the day before (even if it is just thinking about it a little), at night you will have forgotten between 50% -80% of all the information. I mean, just you will remember 50% -20% of that study hour. Our brain receives a continuous bombardment of information every day and for this reason it has to eliminate information that it does not consider important. Our duty is to communicate to the brain which parts it should retain. The best way to do this is by reviewing.
A week later we will only remember one 10% of all the information learned during the first day.
If 1 month has passed and we have not done anything in all this time to remember what we studied, so we will only keep 2% of the information learned on that distant day. Studying that subject again is almost like taking it from scratch.
Understanding the entire process above allows us to alter the shape of the curve so that it works in our favor..
We only need to invest one very small amount of time during successive days so that the curve does not go down. Below you can see the yellow line that describes the new curve.
They are only necessary 10 minutes of review during this day to return to place the curve in 100. I want to point out that these 10 minutes correspond to 1 hour of initial study. That is, if you initially studied 3 hours, on this second day you will have to do a 30-minute equivalent review.
You only need 5 minutes to reactivate all the information (always bearing in mind that you already made a reactivation during day 2). If you studied 3 hours, you will need 15 minutes to reactivate the information.
If you have been reviewing punctually during the previous days, on the 30th you will only need 3 minutes to remember the content of that study hour.
Do you think that you have to invest too much time throughout this process? Let's do a little calculation.
We are going to calculate the necessary minutes of study with the "classic" curve and the "modified" curve..
60 minutes (initial hour) + 60 minutes (on the 30th almost starting from 0) = 120 minutes
60 minutes (initial hour) + 10 minutes (day 2) + 5 minutes (day 7) + 3 minutes (day 30) = 78 minutes
The classic curve forces us to invest 42 more minutes to achieve the same results as with the modified curve. I once again emphasize the fact that these calculations are based on 1 hour of study. For larger quantities the results would increase exponentially.
180 minutes (initial 3 hours of study) + 180 minutes (day 30) = 360 minutes
180 minutes (initial 3 hours of study) + 30 minutes (day 2) + 15 minutes (day 7) + 9 minutes (day 30) = 234 minutes
This time the time differences between choosing one curve or another exceed 2 hours.
I ask this question because I know that more than one is going to ask me. The study and the way of studying of each one is not an exact science. These numbers are an approximation.
When you want to represent the change over time by means of a graph, you choose extreme values to better visualize the magnitude of this variation. Day 30 marks the maximum point at which we have forgotten almost all the information.
Personally, I consider that it is not advisable to wait so long, that is, if we have reviewed the 7th, it would not hurt to review the 15th again. The best way to obtain benefits from this form of study is to put it into practice. Take the test and study 2 topics, one with the classic curve and one with the modified curve. Then tell me about your experience.
Many times we complain about the lack of time to get the subjects ahead. It really is a lack of planning and organization.
With less time, the same results can be achieved. Or what is the same: with the same time and good planning we will obtain better results.
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