How quickly do we forget?

“I’ve got a memory like a sieve!” This exclamation is probably familiar to anyone reading this – maybe you’ve even used it yourself. Perhaps you had your phone charger in your hand just a moment ago and now you can’t find it, or knew you needed to buy milk but forgot because it wasn’t on the shopping list. You may therefore be asking yourself the following question: “Is forgetting normal, or should I be worried?”

Please rest assured: A certain forgetfulness is perfectly normal!

Quelle [1]

In 1885 Hermann Ebbinghaus did an experiment based on learning nonsense syllables by heart. He was surprised to discover that just 20 minutes later he had already forgotten the majority of them. [2]

Further experiments showed that timely revision raises a person’s power of recall to 100%. In particular, revision extends the period for which information is retained before being forgotten. The key to forgetting as little information as possible is therefore to perform multiple cycles of revision and gradually increase the interval between each cycle. [3]

Source [4]

Forgetting is a time-dependent phenomenon that we can counteract by revising.