The Science Behind Why You Forget Things So Quickly
How to combat the forgetting curve and improve your memory.
The “forgetting curve” originated in the 19th century when German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus tested his memory over various periods. After gathering all of his data, the results looked like the image above. As the graph suggests, you retain 100% of the information straight away, as it is still in your short-term memory. Within two days, retention drops to 40%. Afterwards, it slows down a bit, reaching 10% retention after one week.
A video from Growth Engineering nicely summarises why we forget things at such an exponential rate: “Our brains operate a strict use it or lose it policy.” Recent research by Dr. Art Kohn, Professor at Portland State University School of Business states that: “on average, 50% of information is forgotten after one hour, 70% in 24 hours and 90% of information is lost in a week.” So, it’s pretty clear we aren’t great at remembering things longer term, but why?
Well, according to Dr. Kohn, most things we remember are of “short-term importance.” Consequently, the brain needs to make room for memories of more “immediate value.”
You take in about 60 bits of information when talking with someone. To put that into context, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the man who…
