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
In your brain, you have your neurons, kinda like the stores of information and tasks. Eg put left leg forward. Or a differential equation. When you practice something, the connection becomes stronger (or faster) because it builds up myelin in your brain, which wraps the connections between neurons, acting like insulation and greatly speeding up the connection.
The more you practice, the more myelin you build up and the faster you can do something (this is the more technical version of muscle memory).
Myelin and the neurons are biological. So the old adage is use it or lose it. Like muscles. If you don’t practice, the biological components break down over time because your body is trying to figure out what it needs and doesn’t so is constantly ‘pruning’ your brain.
You regain the skill by practicing again… the good news is one you have a skill, it doesn’t take as long to rebuild the myelin lost before (in general). And you’ll start to feel ‘sharper’ and ‘faster’ and eventually if you build up so much myelin you can do the task without even ‘thinking’ about it. In the brain, muscle memory is essentially myelin memory (eli5).
So there is one thing I can recommend you that Ive been doing,
though I dont even like doing it
Sometimes you need to choose to make things harder for yourself
Let me explain
Ive always been good at math and Im very good at calculating things in my head
So I do that whenever I get the chance
Even if I have a calculator or my phone, if its reasonably solvable by calculating it myself, Ill do it
Not because I want to, but because I can
Of course Ill make mistakes etc. but the point is, its not that I actively practise math,
but that I use every oppertunity I get to use it
Even if its only once or twice a month, I do this with most of my skills
Whenever I feel I havnt done x in a while Ill just take dip into it
Thats why I think ‘Use it or lose it’ is very accurate for two reasons
First, you will have a hard time retaining a skill that you never use
Second, because its not ‘Practise or lose it’
While I think practise is praise worthy, it takes time and energy which many,
myself included, have very limited amounts of
That is why I much prefer this ‘just actually use it once in a while’ approach
All these answers are too complicated.
ELY5:
Practice makes perfect.
No practice, no perfect.
Father Guido Sarducci’s [university which only teaches what you would remember 5 years after attending college.](https://youtu.be/c00GPvns31U)
Anecdotally I think there’s an element to how much the skills were used as well. It’s believed that although “use it or lose it” is true – it’s not the entire picture. Massive chunks of the pathway probably still exist as a complete circuit, we just prune the first couple of connections when it’s not used.
An example of this for me was I started a job up at a previous company 5 years after I left. Operationally, not much changed in that time. I practically jumped right in with no training (systems operations and everything). I had also had this job for 5 years before leaving.
On the flip side, if I’m relatively new at something and take a break (in this case Final Fantasy XIV) if I took even a 2 week break it took me a bit to re-learn all my job rotations and everything.
So, yes, there’s definitely a component of “use it or lose it” – but that’s not the whole picture. Another component is how much you used that skill. Maybe the bicycle analogy is a bit old, but a more applicable one would be “It’s like driving a car”. I would almost guess that everyone that learned to drive and did it daily would be incapable of forgetting how to drive unless there was an injury or pathology.
Plenty of people do NOT lose those skills.
Even more flummoxing is when you see people who are super good at something even though it rarely comes up. I found this in machine shops. The experienced machinists can quickly re-set the probe tool, even though it RARELY ever brakes, like at most twice a year, and it’s IMPOSSIBLE for a normie to do it; you have to spin these two screws for adjust but also tighten them at the right alignment and the spinning run-out can’t be more than one tenth of a thousandth of an inch.
When the hell are these guys managing to practice this ? What the hell? We tried doing it for like 2 hours, next time it broke and the older guy was there he did it in like 5 minutes
You don’t forget the skills. While they get rusty, it takes a very minimal amount of effort to refresh them all over again by simply doing what you used to do again. The skills are there, even if they’ve been dormant forever.
Case in point, I stopped drawing when I was a kid because of my parents. It was over 20 years before I drew anything again. I have my wife to thank for that.
Here was my first month of progress: r/reaperart
The skills don’t go anywhere. Just start using them again and they’ll come roaring back quite quickly.
Edit; spelling
I would imagine physical and mental atrophy would be the cause.
Like if you play an instrument then take a break it can take a little time to get use to flexing certain muscles together again that only really suits playing and isn’t necessary in day to day stuff.
Like when in real life would you use the old lady hand or the bear claw?
Practice would get you back to functioning the muscles/synapses
There is a really good Coursera course by Barbara Oakly „Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects“. In that she said, learning in intervals, leads to the best results.
Practice in your down time. You have all of the knowledge stored away, but because you had not done it in so long, your brain forgot the order in which certain things had to happen for the skill.
For example, I’m 24, havent done any real algebra since my junior year of High School, about 7 years ago. I was helping my fiance who was working on some low level algebra for college, and everything just looked like a mess. So I googled it, looked at an example or two, found a practice problem or 2, and it all came back to me. For that specific type of problem, anyways.
It takes practice to develop any skill, and the more practice you dedicate to the skill, the more you will be able to do it. Like muscle memory when writing or walking or cooking, the more you use the knowledge, they better you will end up at it
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