Self-Motivation + Retention, a Better Way to Learn

Several weeks ago, we came across Jack Cheng’s post about the Jerry Seinfeld Calendar and Pimsleur’s Graduated Interval Recall.

The Jerry Seinfeld Calendar is a self-motivating method to encourage and remind yourself to keep at learning the new language. It involves printing out a visible calendar for 365 days, and marking an X across the days you write. Because you’re enthused about learning this new language, you’ll want to keep at it every day. And soon enough, you’ll have a chain of red Xs. Then the self-motivation is to not break the chain.

Pimsleur’s language learning method is about maximizing the retention rate when learning words in a new language and minimizing the number of times you have to repeat it. Knowing that there are optimal rates to practice and recall new information saves time, effort, and should encourage learning new material.

When combined, self-motivation along with knowing what content you need to review and how often to review it, you should be in a better place a year from now.

Smart.fm is an app and website that helps in both areas by presenting you with information at the right time and reminding you to review the content:

The 60 seconds video below explains Graduated Interval Recall. We’ve bookmarked it at the start of the explanation.

Could we apply graduated interval recall to help keep friendships alive? Seems like Facebook already has.