eli5 why do we “forget” long practiced skills after a period of time of not using said skills? and how can we regain those skills

Question

i noticed that after the holidays my math plummeted and teachers told me its because of the break i took… why does this happen and how can i regain those skills acquired prior to the break

In: 356

Answer 1

The thing other comments are missing is WHEN to practice or refresh on something. The answer is: right before you are about to forget it.

Refreshing later than that means you have to spend time relearning, as well. Refreshing sooner than that is a bit wasted, since it’s still “fresh.”

This concept is also called “spaced repetition.” It’s key to learning and retaining ANYTHING. Especially useful for people who have to memorize a lot of stuff, like vocabulary when learning a foreign language. And it’s up to you to recognize the timing for when to refresh on stuff.

For me, with a set of ~20 new vocabulary words, I’d learn 5 at a time, and some I’d refresh after 30 seconds, then 2 minutes, then 2 more minutes, then 10, then 1 hour, 6 hours, a day, etc. The units get longer pretty quickly. But you do have to go back to earlier stuff now and then (like, a month or longer) or you’ll lose it, like you saw with math over the summer.

The good news is that it might just be one hour of time commitment over all of summer break to keep you sharp for the next semester!