Fearing Forgetting: Should You Try to Maintain or Relearn Knowledge?

We are all apt to forget things we have learned in the past. Even memories of important events will eventually decline in accuracy.

If we want to remember things, research tells us that retrieval practice is more effective than passive review. If you have to choose how to study, actively trying to remember the facts is more effective than merely re-reading facts.

The person who uses their foreign language skills occasionally is reminded how much they've forgotten. Setting up a maintenance schedule where you practice your skills once a week may help, but few have the time to prioritize maintenance.

When you choose to specialize, remembering knowledge is less of a problem. The opposite situation is that knowledge is so well-maintained that the routines can lead you into a rut, making improvement more difficult.

It means accepting that your knowledge of old subjects will decline and that there will be a period of hard effort before they're usable at their previous level.

• Relearning tends to be much faster than initial learning.
• Relearning is a form of spacing practice.
• Relearning prioritizes useful knowledge. If something is more useful, you'll find opportunities to practice it. Less useful knowledge will decay more.

Relearning is an excellent strategy for lifelong learning. The problem is the pain of rebuilding confidence. You may remember a better ability than in reality, so even doing your best with the old skill will seem sub-standard.

However, if you can push through this short-term feeling of inadequacy, relearning starts to look good.

A strategy to adopt is to embrace relearning opportunities. It may mean there's a chance you'll fail, but adopting a policy of embracing opportunities will lead to better skills in the long-run.

Acting as if you have not forgotten when you choose projects might push you to do things more often (instead of thinking you need a few weeks or relearning first.) Yet, the rustiness will undoubtedly slow you down at first, and this has to be considered.