Author: admin

How good are you at remembering things? Can you remember your to-do list, without looking? What did you have for dinner a week last Thursday? Personally, I have no idea. Chips? Lasagne? Raspberries? Who knows!

Our brains are great at filtering information to prevent us from becoming overwhelmed from all the stimuli zinging in to us. However, sometimes it’s good to be aware of just how much we can forget.

The term ‘The Forgetting Curve’ has been attributed to the graphed results of a study into memory and recall, conducted by Herman Ebbinghaus in 1895. His research was based on giving people lists of unrelated ‘nonsense’ words and testing their ability to remember them. We need to be clear that this was a specific piece of research, and yet the findings are relevant to us, when we are delegating work, setting up training sessions, transferring knowledge and thinking about our capacity to recall information flung at us in a hurry!

The graph shows that within 20 minutes about 40% of the memorised list was lost, after 24 hours around 70% was lost, after a month 80% had been lost.*

The implication is clear – that our ability to recall things accurately reduces quickly if the information is not reinforced, and that also we tend to underestimate the rate of this decline.

To counter this effect we can harness the benefits of repetition. Research shows that repetition cements in learning and reduces the tendency for our memory to drift away from the facts and make up content to fill the gaps.

In order to be more successful in our organisations we can use coaching approaches to daisy-chain useful packets of learning, make sure key tasks are written down and repeat details to ensure people really did hear them correctly.

We are all likely to slide down the Forgetting Curve at some point and when we do we can remember the name of Ebbinghaus, who helped us to pay attention to repetition and the benefits of revisiting new learning.

What will you be not forgetting this week?

Next week: Delayed Gratification

*Ref www.trainingzone.co.uk

Every Thursday I turn into radio-Rich and spend two hours broadcasting news, music and live business interviews between 12.00 and 2.00pm. You’re welcome to listen in online at Future Radio or find it with a radio player app.

I’ve been hosting the Business Life show for three years and love it as much now as I did on day one.

And the big lesson here for me is that fun time is good for business. When I started the show I was worried that a weekly fixed point commitment would harm business, by constraining my flexibility, but I was wrong. Instead of being a concrete block in the way of progress it has been a pivot around which to turn. I often use Thursday as a networking day and because I have to be in Norwich for radio fun I can easily book in meetings either side of airtime.

So having fun has helped my business!

And I would add that radio is a charity gig. We are volunteers and give our time for free (including production time too). I’m personally not keen on doing charity work that involves me sitting in a bath of beans, or cycling to the moon, and see no reason why I can’t do good work and have fun at the same time, so radio is the perfect fit for me.

What could you do to have fun each week and design-in some good times?

It doesn’t have to be charity work. You could go for a walk, fly a kite, read a book, play a musical instrument …anything that brings a smile to your face!

What dare you do? Once a week…every week! Go on, you can have fun too!

Next week: The Forgetting Curve