As artificial intelligence makes it easier to get the answers you want to any question, retaining knowledge is becoming a rare skill. The Ebbinghaus forgetting curve (introduced by psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1885) proves that we lose most of what we learn over time if we don’t reinforce it or put it into practice.
People are not interested in retention. They may be thinking, Who cares if you can use AI to find out what you want? But we are losing more thinking capacity than we realize.
“Left to itself every mental content gradually loses its capacity for being revived, or at least suffers loss in this regard, under the influence of time,” Ebbinghaus wrote in his book Memory: A Combination of Experimental Psychology.
This proves the forgetting curve is steep and unforgiving—especially if no attempt is made to deliberately retain or recall. We can spend an entire afternoon reading, highlighting, and rereading. By tomorrow, most of the information we ingested is gone. The process may be worse if we stop thinking and completely rely on AI tools to do our thinking for us.
The practice of learning and reading anything can feel very productive. But I’m afraid it’s not the same as retrieval. Your brain keeps for later use what it has to work for. Most of what we learn doesn’t stick, not without the mental struggle.
That’s why making the most of what you learn in life or career matters. Practice active recall and spaced repetition if knowledge retention is what you want.
Proven tools
These two learning techniques have been studied for years—and they work. Together, they outperform other learning methods.
After learning something new, try retrieving it from memory. All the tests we take in school religiously depend on practicing these learning methods. We can keep applying them even if we don’t need the knowledge for tests. Doing so has brain benefits, strengthening memory recall for other things.
So how about closing your favorite book and trying to explain the ideas to yourself on paper? You don’t have to get the whole process right. The goal is repetition. Or making these learning techniques a habit. Even a failed recall attempt works.
“A curious peculiarity of our memory is that things are impressed better by active than by passive repetition,” says philosopher and psychologist William James.
Spaced repetition means getting back to the knowledge at increasing intervals. Don’t just read once. Or finish the book in a week. Pick up the book again a few days later. Reread it in a week and then again in a month.
Every successful retrieval pushes the memory curve. You are training your brain to remember more of what you learn on purpose. It’s an effective approach for long-term retention.
Highlighting good ideas alone may not work as you expect. Start testing yourself. Close the book and take notes. Then read it again next week. It’s a boring process, but it works.
Right now, the attempt to get quick knowledge is so high, but thinking clearly and better means making your brain do the difficult work of recall.
Another method
You can also try the Feynman Technique, named for physicist Richard Feynman, to improve knowledge retention. Pick a concept. Write it down as if you’re teaching someone who knows nothing. When you get stuck, go back to the source. Then try again without the notes.
This works because the process forces you to face what you don’t know. Or what you think you know. It can also improve clarity of thought. Or better still, explain the new knowledge to your colleague. Your brain will reveal what it doesn’t have.
“If you want to master something, teach it. The more you teach, the better you learn. Teaching is a powerful tool for learning,” Feynman said.
It’s a powerful method for understanding something new, but for retention, you still need spaced repetition.
You can combine both for better results. Teach someone what you learn. Then test yourself on it tomorrow, then next week. This process makes you pay attention to learning differently. If your brain expects to retrieve the knowledge, it treats the learning with the seriousness it deserves.
You’re probably thinking, Why go through all this if you have a tool to do the work for you? The trouble is, AI is easier and more dangerous at the same time. You feel better and even productive while using it. But you become worse at thinking and retaining knowledge without it.
If you allow AI to do all your thinking for you, you skip the necessary mental struggle that builds your knowledge retention skill. You get the answers you want in record time. But you miss out on the learning you deserve.
There’s a term for this. It’s called cognitive offloading. AI as a vending machine for quick answers guarantees a lot of information in the shortest possible time. But at a cost. You get zero retention. If you must use AI, make it challenge and extend your thinking skills.
How to use AI to help
You could use AI as your Feynman thinking partner. After you explain a concept in your own words, use your favorite AI tool to find holes in your reasoning. What did you miss? How can you improve the process?
Think with the tool. But always go back to the source and verify that your tool is giving you the right knowledge. Retaining false information is worse than ignorance. Be more interested in getting your facts right. And strengthening your thinking skill through active recall, spaced repetition, and retention of better knowledge.
Make it systematic
Finally, it pays to build a system. You need a structure for learning. You could schedule it. Plan your active recall and retention process. You can use a calendar, an app, or a sticky note for this. The format doesn’t matter, just make sure you are designing a personal learning system you can sustain.
How do you want to learn? What learning interval process works for your lifestyle? When do you want to explain the new knowledge to yourself or someone else? If you can’t explain it clearly without the source, it hasn’t stuck yet. Invest in a system that makes learning enjoyable. It will outperform almost anything else.
Right now, people have access to more tools for learning than at any time in history. The only thing you might not have is the willingness to do the hard part of learning: the repetition and retrieval. The long process of failing and trying again. And most important, the discipline to think for yourself.
The tools to make the most of learning are abundant. The only missing piece is you deciding to do the learning right. And protecting your ability to think for yourself.