Your Memory Has a Plan. And That Plan Is to Forget.

You sometimes walk out of a conference with the feeling that you understood everything. You finish a book telling yourself that this time, it’s going to stick. Two days later, almost nothing remains. Do you know what that means? It means your brain is functioning exactly as intended.

The Forgetting Curve

In 1885, German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus demonstrated what he called the forgetting curve: within one hour, we lose approximately 50% of newly acquired information. Within 24 hours, 70%. Within a month, up to 90%. In 2015, a replication study published in PLOS ONE confirmed these findings using modern methodology. One hundred and forty years later, the human brain has not changed.

Why Do You Think You’ve Learned?

Daniel Kahneman, in Thinking, Fast and Slow, distinguishes between two modes of thinking. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and automatic. System 2 is slow, deliberate, and effortful. When you leave a conference, your System 1 sends you a reassuring signal: I understood. The information feels familiar and fluent. But you confuse familiarity with mastery. Psychologists call this the illusion of competence.

Retaining information requires active recall — a System 2 activity. And that takes work. And it’s uncomfortable. And your brain doesn’t like it.

Five Minutes a Day Is Enough

Ebbinghaus had already discovered the antidote: the spacing effect. Revisiting information at increasing intervals — one day later, one week later, one month later — radically transforms retention. Microlearning is the everyday translation of this principle: short, repeated, spaced learning experiences that are accessible on your phone between meetings.

A meta-analysis published in MATHEMA: Jurnal Pendidikan Matematika in 2025 compiled studies conducted between 2020 and 2025 in higher education. The conclusion: sessions lasting 5 to 10 minutes, repeated 3 to 5 times per week, increased retention rates by 87% and produced superior learning outcomes. The recipe is simple, accessible, and costs almost nothing.

Application Is What Matters

In the 1980s, Morgan McCall, Michael Lombardo, and Robert Eichinger, from the Center for Creative Leadership, asked nearly 200 senior executives to identify what had truly developed their skills. The findings, published in The Career Architect Development Planner, led to what is now known as the 70-20-10 model: 70% of learning comes from direct experience, 20% from interactions with peers and mentors, and only 10% from formal training. Most of what you know how to do, you owe to experience, to your colleagues, and to the application of what you have learned.

What You Need to Remember

Your brain forgets the majority of what you learn. This is not a flaw — it is a mechanism you can outsmart. Review tomorrow what you learned today. Five minutes, not two hours. And above all, apply it: it is through action, through conversations with colleagues, through mistakes corrected in real time that competence is truly built. You do not need a budget or permission to get started. You just need five minutes tomorrow morning.

Gaëtan Namouric

Founder and Strategist at Perrier Jablonski.

Teacher, Speaker, Columnist, and Author.

To listen to the podcast episode featuring Gaëtan Namouric:

https://info.illuxi.com/en/podcast

Bibliography:

BOOK · Hermann Ebbinghaus (1885). Über das Gedächtnis: Untersuchungen zur experimentellen Psychologie. Duncker & Humblot. The pioneering study on memory and forgetting, which introduced the forgetting curve and the spacing effect.

BOOK · Daniel Kahneman (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The distinction between System 1 and System 2 thinking, and the cognitive illusions that arise from them — including the illusion of competence.

SCIENTIFIC STUDY · Jaap Murre and Joeri Dros (2015). Replication and Analysis of Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve. PLOS ONE. A modern replication confirming the validity of the original curve 130 years later.

META-ANALYSIS · Microlearning Effectiveness in Higher Education: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Student Retention and Learning Outcomes (2025). MATHEMA: Jurnal Pendidikan Matematika. A compilation of studies conducted between 2020 and 2025 showing that 5- to 10-minute sessions, repeated 3 to 5 times per week, increased retention by 87%.

BOOK · Michael M. Lombardo and Robert W. Eichinger (1996). The Career Architect Development Planner. Lominger Press. Research conducted at the Center for Creative Leadership involving nearly 200 senior executives, which gave rise to the 70-20-10 model.