If you don’t use it, you’ll lose it!

Just the other day one of my colleagues came into my office and asked me, “If I know my average demand for a product, do you know how to calculate how much I’ll need to have a 95% certainty it will be in stock?”

I opened my mouth and said, “Yes, I can help you…wait…I used to know how to do a calculation like that. Let me think about it for a minute.”

Back in high school I fell in love with probability and statistics and took all the courses my school taught. That was almost twelve years ago. Since graduating, I don’t know that I’ve really had occasion to do many statistical calculations. It’s a skill I was once pretty proficient in, and now I’m so rusty and out of practice it’s embarrassing.

I didn’t use it and I lost it.

The same was true for my colleague. He was a management and quality major who had studied EOQ models and statistical analysis of inventory while earning his degree. It was also about ten years ago for him that he did all of this work and he too was rusty and out of practice with statistical analysis of inventory. Between the two of us we managed to scrape up a formula that might be right - we’re still working on it.

When we learn skills, but tuck them away and don’t practice them we eventually forget enough of the “how-to” that after a long enough time has passed we’re essentially starting from scratch. We remember learning the skill, but we often don’t remember enough details to make the skill immediately useful. This includes obscure grammar rules, science, math, chemistry, you name it. It also includes personal development ideas too.

I think it’s even more likely that most “don’t use it and lose it” when it comes to learning personal development ideas. We find an article with some great tips or we hear a speaker with amazing passion about an idea and we get charged up and excited! We stock the idea away in the back of our mind and maybe even practice it for a few days.

For a lot of us - I know for me personally - many of the great ideas I read will make it into my brain to be filed away. And when this happens I will usually “lose it” to the dustbin of my memory.

How many times have you been super charged up and excited about an idea, but were at a place where immediate action was difficult to take? I’m willing to bet a shiny quarter that you very likely didn’t take any action and you probably let the feeling and the excitement and the passion die down a little.

After a little more time went by, I’m willing to wager you didn’t take any action at all. You had this great idea or you read this amazing article or you heard this amazing speaker, but you didn’t use what you learned and you eventually lost it.

I’m not pointing fingers at you, I do it all the time myself. It’s easy to let things like this slip out of grasp unless we followup and take immediate action.

Our minds are great at consuming huge amounts of information and sorting it around into patterns. But if we don’t follow up on that information and reinforce it to ourselves our mind figures it must not really be that important and it eventually discards it.

First it moves the information from ready-access to storage a little deeper - you can usually still recall what you want, but it takes a little longer.

After the information has been in second level of storage for a while, your brain decides it needs more space - new information is coming in all the time you know - and moves it into long-term storage. You can usually recall bits and pieces of the information, but there are substantial gaps.

Finally, like old receipts, you brain decides that that long-term storage could really stand to be cleaned out to make room for new items that are ready to go into long-term storage. So it saves the file folder that says “Probability and Statistics skills” and throws everything else away. About all I remember is that I had taken classes in probability and statistics, and that I enjoyed it, but little else.

The good news is that since our brain keeps the file folders around, picking up the skills a second time is usually much simpler. Our brain already has a place to stick those skills and information and it picks up on them much more quickly. But you still have to invest the time to re-learn (or re-remember as it were) the skill.

This is why it’s so important to form good habits - to get regular reinforcement of skills that are important - and to remember that not using it is just inviting your brain to lose it.

How do you “use it” on a regular basis when it comes to self-improvement and development information? I think this will vary a little for every person, because every person is unique.

There aren’t really that many truly new ideas in the world of personal development. If you read enough books and listen to enough audio programs you’ll eventually see the patterns of truth that are in every respected self-improvement teacher’s material. What is unique is how these core truths get repackaged by different teachers. For example, you may really “click” with my presentation of an idea when you didn’t “click” with the very same idea presented a different way by Napoleon Hill.

I think that the first step to really internalizing these core truths of success, achievement and development is developing a habit of reading. There are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of books and web sites out there with articles and information on goal-setting, success, achievement, wealth creation, self-improvement and development. If you read enough of these resources, you’ll begin to learn what the core truths are, and it will give you a good framework on which to hang information.

The second step is to discipline yourself to keep positive, success-building and self-improving material in front of you on a regular basis. When you discipline yourself to do this, and actually do it on a regular basis it will transform into a habit. Once you are habitually taking in positive material (both new and re-read older material) you’ll have that constant reinforcement to keep the concepts and ideas fresh in your mind. By making a commitment with myself to start this web site, I’m forced to keep such material constantly in front of myself - your method will probably be different.

Finally, you need to take action on those ideas that strike a chord within yourself. When you find a really good idea, or a unique approach to an idea that really resonates with you - find a way to implement it or take other action on it. This will cement it in your mind and taking action on it will increases the chances of you eventually turning it into a habit. When you take action on it, you begin to practice it as a part of your routine.

When you’ve made it all the way through this cycle, it’s time to start over; this will keep you in a self-reinforcing feedback loop. If you stay diligent in doing this, you shouldn’t have too much to worry about when it comes to “losing it.”

* * * * * If you enjoyed this article, will you please consider bookmarking it on del.icio.us?

Here are some related articles you might also enjoy!

• Motivation from your own printer
• Let the thoughts flow…
• Don’t plan yourself to death.
• Zero-sum based thinking
• What’s your dharma?

February 8th, 2006

Entry Filed under: Development, Success, Improvement