Today, I watched a video by Nishant Kasibhatla about how to learn to retain that had me thinking.
As a child and even as an adult during my 20s and 30s, I prided myself for my excellent memory. In the last decade, I’ve been attributing my gradual weakening memory to age. However, after watching this video, I realised two things:
Firstly, my memory started fading after smartphones became the norm. So, I wonder if it was due to the multi-tasking forced into my system with notifications that have caused this?
Second, I’ve increased the consumption of information and do less to reflect on it, implement some actions or share the learning. Is it probably because information is freely available these days and there is no process in place to force the next steps of learning that I’ve started over-consuming without retaining?
In short, I wonder if my perception of my memory fading is only a consequence of a change in my habits. From the one-point focussed attentive person to a multi-tasker, partly enforced by the responsibilities in life, partly by the smart phone culture, have I lost my retaining abilities?
The gist of the video is to insist that learning cannot be just input and more input.
Input has to be followed by Reflection. Pause and think about what you learnt.
Implementation follows Reflection. Once you’ve run over what you’ve learnt to ensure that you’ve understood everything, did you try implementing the learning in some way?
Finally, share it. Share what you’ve learnt so that you gain clarity and the concepts get reinforced.
In short, your output should be at least 2X the input.
So, go ahead and try this method so as to learn to retain better.
(Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash)