Forgetting, as was discovered by Hermann Ebbinghaus more than a hundred years ago, falls off with an exponentially decaying curve. That means that memories that are retained for longer are less and less likely to be forgotten when you follow up at a later date. This pattern suggests that maintenance practice, too, can fall off on a decaying rate, s

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You’ll begin with short intervals (two to four days) between practice sessions. Every time you successfully remember, you’ll increase the interval (e.g., nine days, three weeks, two months, six months, etc.), quickly reaching intervals of years. This keeps your sessions challenging enough to continuously drive facts into your long-term memory. If y

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Why is spaced practice more effective than massed practice? It appears that embedding new learning in long-term memory requires a process of consolidation, in which memory traces (the brain’s representations of the new learning) are strengthened, given meaning, and connected to prior knowledge—a process that unfolds over hours and may take several

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