Revising the subject before it gets far deep in the brain and becomes irretrievable:

Revising the subject before it gets far deep in the brain and becomes irretrievable: CA Rajesh Pabari - 

One important lesson I had learned long back from a theory called Super-Memo that was developed by Polish Researcher Piotr Woznaik. Many students might be unknowingly applying this concept but it is advisable to learn this concept so that it can be applied in actual situation in correct scientific manner.

The summary of the theory goes like this. Suppose we read something today, the same is forgotten within around 50 Days to the extent of 90% without any revision. The theory also finds out that the process of forgetting is very fast in the beginning. In the given example, after around 5-7 days (or may be less than that), almost 50% of what you have studied today is forgotten. In around 20 days, around 70% is forgotten and in 30 days almost 80-85% is forgotten. Does this ring a bell in your mind? Perhaps by now, it must have. But if it has not, then let me now tell you what we can do for this. We should devise our revision techniques in such a way that before the things are forgotten, we should be able to revise it. It is most advisable to revise first time within 24 hours (Applies for everything). Then again within next seven days. Then again in 30 days. Then again in 60 days. As and when we are revising it again, it will take lesser and lesser time because we have already revised the same thing number of times and it has become part of permanent memory.

You might be thinking that we don’t have this much time. But let me tell you that our brain is capable of doing what we cannot think of as possible. If you will try it, you will find that what you studied today for 8 hours can be revised tomorrow within 1 hour because the same is very much fresh in your mind. (Remember when the exam days comes, we do revise this much in 1 hour, then why not now?). And after a week, same should be revised again then after a month once again. This may take you around 1-1 hour each time. So spending 3 additional hours gave you three revisions and the confidence of revising it for three times by now.  This method allows you to retain the things in mind over longer period of time.

Now take another situation where the same thing is revised directly after a month, in this case you will need at least 3 hours to revise what you had studies in 8 hours because it will be almost forgotten what you had studied. And this time you will realize that you have almost forgotten 80% of what you had read. There is psychological disadvantage after spending almost the same amount of time as against the first example. And the 3 additional hours applied gives you only the second revision. While in the first case, you have revised it thrice.

If you want to retain something in your brain for future retrieval on demand, revision is important. There are neural science concepts behind this theory but for the time being just keep in mind that the more you revise, the more you can recall.