Chapter 99 The Second Law of Nature: Repetition

Recite a book as long as the "New Testament"-one of the largest universities in the world is the Al-Afa University in Cairo.It is an Islamic university with 21,000 students.In the entrance examination of this university, every student applying for admission is required to recite it.The length of the book is about the same as that of the New Testament, and it takes 3 days to recite it. Chinese students were called "school children" in ancient times, and they also had to recite some Chinese religious and classics. Why can these Arab and Chinese students show such memory? It turned out that they adopted a method of continuous repetition, which is the second natural law of memory we are going to introduce here.

You can memorize countless amounts of information—as long as you repeat it often.Review often what you wish to remember, use it constantly, practice it, and apply new words to your conversations.Talk about the points you want to make in your speech in conversation, the knowledge and material used will make you unforgettable. The correct and effective way of repetition - however, it is not enough to memorize and review a certain knowledge blindly and mechanically.It should be repeated wisely, and it should be reviewed in accordance with a certain fixed ideological characteristic-this is the method we should have.Professor Ebbinghaus chose many meaningless syllables for his students to recite, such as "Deyux", "Goli" and so on.He found that in less than 3 days, these students recited these strange characters an average of 38 times, and they were able to memorize them all. If they repeated them 68 times in one breath, they could also memorize them all. ... Various other psychological tests have repeatedly shown the same results.

This is an important finding from experiments on memory.This experiment also showed that if a person sits down and repeats something until it is etched in memory.It takes him exactly twice as much time and effort as he does to obtain the same result by repeating the behavior at intervals of time. This oddly desirable behavior—if we may call it that—is explained by two factors. First, in the intervals between repeated behaviors, our subconscious minds have been busy forming them into more reliable associations.As Professor James said: "We learn to swim in winter and ski in summer."

Second, when doing repetitions in intervals, our minds are less fatigued from working continuously. Sir Richard Burton, the translator of "The Arabian Nights", can speak 27 languages ​​fluently, but he admits that he never practices or studies a certain language for more than 15 minutes at a time, "because once more than 15 minutes, the It loses its freshness.” Knowing these facts, we believe that even a person who professes to have a lot of common sense will not wait until the eve of giving a speech to prepare for it.If he had to wait until before the speech, his memory would only be half as effective.

Here is a very helpful discovery for us about the way of "forgetting".Psychological experiments have repeatedly shown that we forget more of the new knowledge we have just learned in the first 8 hours than we forget in the next 36 days.What an amazing proportion!Therefore, when you are about to walk into a business meeting or a parent meeting or a club meeting, before you give a speech, you should immediately go through your information and think again about the facts you have collected. Your memory comes back to life. Lincoln knew the value of doing this, and used it time and time again.At Gettysburg that year, the learned Edward Everett was scheduled to speak ahead of him.As Everett's speech drew to a close in his lengthy formal dedication, Lincoln "appeared visibly tense."He always did when others spoke before him.He adjusted his spectacles hastily, then took the lecture note from his pocket, and read it over silently to strengthen his memory.