We're all familiar with the notion that memorizing facts takes persistence, time and repetition. What isn't so obvious is that there's an optimum time to practice the recollection of facts you are trying to learn, and that time is precisely before you are about to forget that fact:

Practice too soon and you waste your time. Practice too late and you've forgotten the material and have to relearn it. The right time to practice is just at the moment you're about to forget. Unfortunately, this moment is different for every person and each bit of information.

...

Fortunately, human forgetting follows a pattern. We forget exponentially.

Wolf's article primarily discusses Piotr Wozniak's SuperMemo software, an application which is designed to take advantage of this insight. You fill it with a database of things you'd like to remember, and it attempts to model your retention curve for each of the facts while you use it, prompting you to recall information at just the right time to optimally burn it into memory.

Unfortunately, I couldn't track down an open source tool that does anything similar. Some of the legacy versions of SuperMemo appear to be freeware, and the full application itself isn't expensive, but I can't help but think this would make for a really cool open source package.

Software aside, I wonder how effective a person could become at general studying and fact retention by taking this insight into consideration. Are any readers actively using this tool or something similar? I'd love to hear your comments.

Hackszine reader nathaN writes:

i have mind performance hacks here on my lap, and i found hack 56. you included transformational grammar, surface/deep structure, you have to be aware of this other book on my desk, next to my lap. The book describes a method of using transformational grammar to analyze statements and gather incredible amounts of information, the technique is called the Meta Model, i had to write this post after i found #56 in your book. it's out of print, i think, but it's not too hard to find used if you make a few calls. it cost ME $35, but its probably online as well, torrents or whatever =(

its the single most useful "hack" i've ever found, ive been using it for about an year and it gives me more options than i know how to take advantage of.

The Structure of Magic I, by Richard Bandler and John Grinder
Introduction by Virginia Satir and Gregory Bateson.
Science and Behavior Books, Inc
copyright 1975

Unfortunately, the Google Books entry for The Structure of Magic I wasn't a full scanned version. There is, however, a wealth of information about the Meta-model and other Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) tools on Wikipedia:

The meta-model in neuro-linguistic programming (or meta-model of therapy) is a heuristic set of questions designed to specify information, challenge and expand the limits to a person's model of the world. It responds to the distortions, generalizations, and deletions in the speaker's language.

In the process of communicating, the mind is forced to translate a person's experiences and their internal understanding of the world into words, making language a highly optimized and compressed representation of a complex internal mental state. This translation occurs a second time, as the listener parses language and interprets that communication based on their own mental world model and past experiences.

The meta-model provides tools for quickly parsing the structure of a communication, determining implied meaning, and locating potential points of misunderstanding. When you can recognize the linguistic translation artifacts that are common patterns in the communication process, you can respond to them. On the receiving end, this helps you better understand the experiences that underlie the speaker's language. On the sending end, it helps you to better communicate without misunderstanding. Internally, it helps you to analyze and debug your own model of the world.

Meta-model (Neuro-linguistic Programming) - Link
Mind Performance Hacks @ the Maker Store - Link

"When a person is in a space with a 10-foot ceiling, they will tend to think more freely, more abstractly," said Meyers-Levy. "They might process more abstract connections between objects in a room, whereas a person in a room with an 8-foot ceiling will be more likely to focus on specifics."

The research demonstrates that variations in ceiling height can evoke concepts that, in turn, affect how consumers process information. The authors theorized that when reasonably salient, a higher versus a lower ceiling can stimulate the concepts of freedom versus confinement, respectively. This causes people to engage in either more free-form, abstract thinking or more detail-specific thought. Thus, depending on what the task at hand requires, the consequences of the ceiling could be positive or negative.

There's a study in the journal Science (abstract here) that found that recent declarative memories (facts and experiences) were better recalled when subjects were cued with a scent during the memorization process and again during slow wave sleep. Procedural memories, such as learning to ride a bike, were not improved by the scent cues.

I'm curious how this could be used as a study aid, especially for preparing for tests or presentations, situations where a person might typically sleep immediately after a memorization session. Imagine a desktop device that periodically emits an intense scent while you study, then sits by your bedside and repeats the burst of scent when it detects the onset of slow wave sleep -[via] Link.

Related:

• Slow wave sleep
• The Hippocampus (and its role in consolidating declarative memories)
• Mind Hacks

I came up with this self-organizing post-it note that you can print on your home computer. It's helped me immensely, and I've received so many compliments, that I decided to make it available for free online.

If you're like me, you live your life on post-its. Everything from grocery lists, to new ideas, to super important phone numbers that I should never, ever lose. It means that when I'm looking for that super important number, I have to look through every other post-it to find the one I want.

ENTER THE OVERnote

The OVERnote is something I came up with to help me navigate this paper sea. Now my notes are self-catagorizing and I can find things at a glance.

OUTDRA.WS - Link.

My pal Mikey pointed me to Energy fiend, a fantastic site that has new caffeinated energy drinks along with caffeine content in each drink - Link.

Also - Celsius just popped up on my radar, 400mg and no corn syrup, anyone try this yet? - Link.

Fun fact from energy fiend...Sweden, Denmark and Norway -- all around 400mg of caffeine per person per day. Cracking DRM, running pirate bay - it all makes sense now.

Pictured here, my brief experimentation with caffeine soap.