Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve
Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve
The empirical observation, originally from Hermann Ebbinghaus's 1880s self-experiments, that retention of new information decays steeply and fast without reinforcement.
The headline figure quoted in How To Learn Anything So Fast (theMITmonk):
Roughly 70% of new information is gone within 24 hours.
The shape of the curve
Decay is steepest in the first hours, then flattens. Each well-timed review bends the curve — retention after each successful retrieval decays more slowly than before. This is the mechanism that makes Spaced Repetition work: reviews are scheduled near the point where the curve hits the threshold, not before.
Reframe: forgetting as a feature
The MITmonk's framing: the brain isn't broken when it forgets — it's doing exactly what evolution shaped it to do, discard what isn't repeated. The implication is design-level rather than corrective: don't fight forgetting; schedule around it.
Tooling that operationalizes this
- Remnote — automatic scheduling of review intervals
- Anki, SuperMemo (referenced lineage; not yet in this wiki)
- Manual: calendar reminders for "review X in 1d / 3d / 7d / 21d"