Spaced Repetition = Wait-lifting
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Your memory improves when you actually have to work to remember something, not when it’s just right at the front of your brain.
See, it’s, it’s like weightlifting.
To get stronger, you have to continually increase that weight.
And to increase your memory, the idea is you have to wait longer before the next time you retrieve the knowledge.
Waiting longer is like putting weight on the bar.
You wanna increase that weight.
But the thing you gotta remember: you don’t get stronger just by putting more weight on the bar.
You actually have to lift that weight successfully.
‘Cause if you add so much weight that you can’t even move it, or you wait so long between reviewing information that you have to relearn it from scratch, not even on the tip of your tongue, but “I have no idea, I need to relearn this,” that’s too much weight.
So this general principle behind both building muscle and building memory is that you want enough resistance to challenge you, but not so much that you can’t do it.
This teaser is distilled from the following posts, if you want to dive deeper:
- Spaced repetition is so similar to weight training that it might as well be called “wait” training.
- Cognitive Science of Learning: Spaced Repetition (Distributed Practice)
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