How to Retain What You Learn

Curiosity Chronicle - A podcast by Sahil Bloom

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Welcome to the 1,116 new members of the curiosity tribe who have joined us since Friday. Join the 68,953 others who are receiving high-signal, curiosity-inducing content every single week.Today’s newsletter is brought to you by Trends!Trends is my personal cheat code for generating new business and content ideas.It’s a premium newsletter from The Hustle that deconstructs the secret sauce of interesting businesses, side hustles, and emerging opportunities—and gives you the playbook to pounce on them. Even better, membership provides instant access to an exclusive community of 15,000+ entrepreneurs who are building the future.I learn something new from every single issue—it has become a core part of my content and learning engine. A true must-read. I can’t recommend it highly enough.Use the link below to join—no commitment, no catch, cancel anytime!Today at a Glance:Learning is a meta-skill—arguably the most important meta-skill.School taught us many things, but unfortunately, how to learn was not one of them.The retention framework I use involves five steps: (1) Inspired Consumption; (2) Unstructured Note-Taking; (3) Consolidation; (4) Analogize; and (5) Idea Exercise. The structure is sequential, but its practice is often dynamic & iterative.Spaced Repetition is the most formal—and powerful—idea exercise method. It’s a method in which information is consumed at increasing intervals until it's committed to long-term memory. It leverages cognitive science—the way our brains work to convert short-term to long-term memory—to help you retain newly-consumed information.How to Retain What You LearnLearning is a meta-skill—arguably the most important meta-skill.School taught us many things, but unfortunately, how to learn was not one of them.Learning is how we adapt to our changing environments, circumstances, and situations. Learning allows us to create new “maps”—and edit old ones—in order to navigate the dynamic, highly-complex world with confidence.Growth is fundamentally driven by the long-term accumulation and compounding of usable learning. We accumulate and compound this learning through consumption and retention. Consumption is the inputs—what comes in. Retention is what remains after any leakage.Imagine your brain like a bathtub.The faucet is the entrance, the drain is the exit. Everything you research and consume flows in through the faucet. Everything you forget flows out through the drain.I’ve written a lot about the faucet in the past—here and here most recently—but I’ve never talked about the drain.Let’s fix that today—let’s talk about learning retention.Learning from The MatrixI love The Matrix. It’s not just sci-fi, there is a lot we can draw from it about learning and retention.Bear with me…In one of the early scenes of the first film, Keanu Reeves’ character—Neo—is plugged into the system and has a program uploaded into his brain. He has a moment of shocked revelation where he looks up and says, “I know kung fu.” He proceeds to demonstrate his new mastery in a virtual sparring room. Most importantly, Neo never forgets this new skill.To be sure, this isn’t that crazy an idea. Our brains are just software. When we learn, we are updating that software. But in the real world, though, our software is flawed and buggy—we forget important things or overwrite old data all the time.Our best bet? Develop a strategy for retention that is grounded in science. An approach to retention that is as integrated and comprehensive as our approach to learning. We may not become Neo, but we can become more Neo-like.The Retention FrameworkHere's a tactical framework for improving your retention…The retention framework I use involves five steps:Inspired ConsumptionUnstructured Note-TakingConsolidationAnalogizeIdea ExerciseThe structure is sequential, but its practice is often dynamic & iterative.Let's walk through each of the steps...Step 1: Inspired ConsumptionRetention starts with consumption.I bucket consumption into two types:Forced: Compelled, either internally or externally. Inspired: Driven entirely by your internal inspirations.If you've ever been in school, you know what forced consumption looks like. Forced consumption is the book you're told to read, despite the topic being of zero interest to you. It's the foundation of much of the traditional education system—yet another reason why so many of us are bad at learning retention!Inspired consumption is when you feel genuinely pulled to consume—when you enjoy the consumption process.It requires the willingness to put ego aside and "quit” more books (or content) when that genuine inspiration fades.Inspired consumption is important for retention for two key reasons.Inspiration is a precursor to flow. More flow state, more retention.Inspiration fuels engagement. Engage with the content, retain the content.Inspired consumption is the foundation of retention.Step 2: Unstructured Note-TakingWhen you start consuming, you should have a note-taking system in front of ...

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