Did you know most learners will forget 90% of what they have learned within the first seven days? It’s called the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve.
The basic premise is that unless we consciously do something to retain newly acquired information, we’ll forget it. In fact, the forgetting curve is exponential in nature.
Most of the forgetting occurs within the first hour of learning. After a day or two, we typically forget about 75% of what we’ve learned. Within a week, it will be as if the learning had never occurred at all.
This is why we only remember a few essential details and store them in our long-term memory which means we’ll remember those for a longer period.
Wouldn’t it make sense that we’d repeat ourselves with those we lead and love then? We’d realize patience and repetition will reinforce the most essential ideas, keeping it simple and clear for our teams.
Sustainable learning takes place over time. It’s much more effective than cramming information into one occurrence and allows us to reshape the forgetting curve.
“Repetition is the mother of learning.”