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Today at a Glance:

Learning is a meta-skill—arguably the most important meta-skill.

School taught us many things, but unfortunately, how to learn was not one of them.

The retention framework I use involves five steps: (1) Inspired Consumption; (2) Unstructured Note-Taking; (3) Consolidation; (4) Analogize; and (5) Idea Exercise. The structure is sequential, but its practice is often dynamic & iterative.

Spaced Repetition is the most formal—and powerful—idea exercise method. It’s a method in which information is consumed at increasing intervals until it's committed to long-term memory. It leverages cognitive science—the way our brains work to convert short-term to long-term memory—to help you retain newly-consumed information.

How to Retain What You Learn

Learning is a meta-skill—arguably the most important meta-skill.

School taught us many things, but unfortunately, how to learn was not one of them.

Learning is how we adapt to our changing environments, circumstances, and situations. Learning allows us to create new “maps”—and edit old ones—in order to navigate the dynamic, highly-complex world with confidence.

Growth is fundamentally driven by the long-term accumulation and compounding of usable learning. We accumulate and compound this learning through consumption and retention. Consumption is the inputs—what comes in. Retention is what remains after any leakage.

Imagine your brain like a bathtub.

The faucet is the entrance, the drain is the exit. Everything you research and consume flows in through the faucet. Everything you forget flows out through the drain.

I’ve written a lot about the faucet in the past—here and here most recently—but I’ve never talked about the drain.

Let’s fix that today—let’s talk about learning retention.

Learning from The Matrix

I love The Matrix. It’s not just sci-fi, there is a lot we can draw from it about learning and retention.

Bear with me…

In one of the early scenes of the first film, Keanu Reeves’ character—Neo—is plugged into the system and has a program uploaded into his brain. He has a moment of shocked revelation where he looks up and says, “I know kung fu.” He proceeds to demonstrate his new mastery in a virtual sparring room. Most importantly, Neo never forgets this new skill.

To be sure, this isn’t that crazy an idea. Our brains are just software. When we learn, we are updating that software. But in the real world, though, our software is flawed and buggy—we forget important things or overwrite old data all the time.

Our best bet? Develop a strategy for retention that is grounded in science. An approach to retention that is as integrated and comprehensive as our approach to learning. We may not become Neo, but we can become more Neo-like.

The Retention Framework

Here's a tactical framework for improving your retention…

The retention framework I use involves five steps:

Inspired Consumption

Unstructured Note-Taking

Consolidation

Analogize

Idea Exercise

The structure is sequential, but its practice is often dynamic & iterative.

Let's walk through each of the steps...

Step 1: Inspired Consumption

Retention starts with consumption.

I bucket consumption into two types:

Forced: Compelled, either internally or externally.

Inspired: Driven entirely by your internal inspirations.

If you've ever been in school, you know what forced consumption looks like. Forced consumption is the book you're told to read, despite the topic being of zero interest to you. It's the foundation of much of the traditional education system—yet another reason why so many of us are bad at learning retention!

Inspired consumption is when you feel genuinely pulled to consume—when you enjoy the consumption process.

It requires the willingness to put ego aside and "quit” more books (or content) when that genuine inspiration fades.

Inspired consumption is important for retention for two key reasons.

Inspiration is a precursor to flow. More flow state, more retention.

Inspiration fuels engagement. Engage with the content, retain the content.

Inspired consumption is the foundation of retention.

Step 2: Unstructured Note-Taking

When you start consuming, you should have a note-taking system in front of you.

Sahil Note: I use Notion for my note taking, but there are probably 10 other options out there (and I’m currently evaluating Obsidian as another option for more networked notes). The old fashioned way—pen and paper—works too, with the caveat that searchable notes are ideal in my opinion.

On the first pass through the material, keep your notes as unstructured and free-flowing as possible.

What to take note of:

Foundation-building ideas

Novel insights

Things that made you go “hmmm” or “wow!”

Connections you identified to other topics

Questions or confusion

Strong reactions you had to new information

Remember: This first pass of notes is intended to be unstructured. The simple act of writing helps ideas stick.

Step 3: Consolidation

Zoom out and review your unstructured notes.

What are the most interesting, novel insights or ideas? What are the most confusing?

Consolidation is where you re-consume content with a specific focus on building structure around your notes in these particular areas.

If unstructured note-taking created a bunch of dots, consolidation is where you start connecting them.

It doesn't have to be perfect, but you should start to form a more refined picture as you re-consume the content for this purpose.

Consolidation is when knowledge begins to stick.

Step 4: Analogize

Analogizing is the most effective—and least well-known—retention tool.

This is where you take your newly-learned information and place it within your broader mental maps. You make clear comparisons and connections between newly-learned and existing information.

Here's a real example from my writing to illustrate how this works:

I did a bunch of research on Morris Chang and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company for a piece. During my consolidation, it struck me that TSMC's novel pure-play chip manufacturer model had enabled independent chip designers to start their own companies.