The Powerful Power of Repetition

When I was first learning Spanish, there was one hack that accelerated my progress more than anything: Every morning, while eating breakfast, I would watch the first 20 minutes of Y tu Mamá También.

You’ve heard about people learning languages by watching movies, but, until you’re at a level where you actually understand a great deal of what’s going on, that makes one’s progress slow.

By repeating the same 20 minute section over and over, bit by bit, I was able to eventually understand all of the 20 minutes.

It’s en vogue to proclaim that there’s no point in memorizing anything because…Internet. Seth Godin has repeated this numerous times (in the more relevant context of useless rote memorization in schools).

But, as Nicholas Carr explores in The Shallows:

…long-term memory is actually the seat of understanding…. The depth of our intelligence hinges on our ability to transfer information from working memory to long-term memory and weave it into conceptual schemas.

Each time I watched that section of the movie, a small amount of what was mostly gibberish to me would survive that night’s sleep, and be stored in my long-term memory. Through repetition, each of these tiny nodes of understanding would connect to another tiny node of understanding, forming a tree-like schema of my Spanish knowledge.

Whenever I heard or spoke Spanish in another context, inevitably, something I heard, or something I wanted to say, would collide with a branch in that schema. They say THIS in the movie, so he must have meant THAT. They say THIS in the movie, so it will probably work if I say THAT.

I went from watching the 20 minutes with English subtitles, to watching the 20 minutes with Spanish subtitles, to watching the 20 minutes with no subtitles.

I now understand enough Spanish that I could watch any Spanish-speaking movie one time and learn a little bit, but it’s the repetition that accelerated my learning, especially in the beginning.

It takes concerted effort to repeat things. There is always some new information to consume, or some new experience you could have instead. (Usually offered up for the oh-so-expensive price of “free.”)

But, there is a powerful power in repetition. Each time you repeat something, you notice something different. Each time you repeat something, there’s some piece — now stored in your long-term memory, instead of being frantically processed by your short-term memory — that just comes easier.

Here are some other ways I harness the powerful power of repetition:

• If I admire a writer’s style, I read the same piece repeatedly, noticing new things about their word choice and overall structure.
• If I’m rehearsing for a speech, I record myself, then listen to it repeatedly, slowly noticing things that could be cut out or rephrased.
• In studying for my podcast, I listen to great interviews repeatedly, each time noticing something different about the choice of questions, and how it contributes to the overall listening experience.

Each repetition may start with a little boredom. It seems Really, Really, Extremely, Very Inefficient. But once new details start leaping out at me, I quickly become engaged. It may just be enough to propel me through 10,000 hours. This is the reward for recognizing the powerful power of repetition.

If you listen to the interviews on my podcast, Love Your Work, repeatedly, you (maybe) will program yourself to have superpowers. Subscribe on iTunes, or listen to the interview with Jason Fried (repeatedly).