A popular quote by William Glasser says “We learn… 10 percent of what we read, 20 percent of what we hear, 30 percent of what we see, 50 percent of what we see and hear, 70 percent of what we discuss with others, 80 percent of what we experience, and 95 percent of what we teach to someone.” The percentages might be somewhat off, but they are close enough to actual values to internalize this information for future learning. Here I discuss what this quote means, and why it should be said out loud a couple of times:
Do Less Of Plain Reading
It is easy to see from the quote that reading is not the way to absorb a concept. This means to avoid reading that is not accompanied by any other form of action. If you read a book, but then don’t read any of it out loud, don’t discuss it with others in person or on an online forum, don’t implement what you read in your day-to-day activity, and don’t teach concepts from the book to someone else, your time reading it was wasted for the most part. 90% of the material, representing 90% of your time reading the book, is then gone.
Keep Everything You Do In The High Percentage Regions
If you are going to read a book, use some of the big methods for retention to make it worthwhile. If the book has how-to material in it, don’t read something unless you are going to go do it afterwards, using what you read and thought about. If the book goes over a concept that is confusing or interesting to you, go talk to someone about it, or find an online book forum where that book was discussed in a thread and add to it or read what others had to say. Read parts of the book to yourself out loud if they seem like important portions.
Memory Retention Percentages Are Based On Pressure
You learn 90% of what you teach to others because big pressure is on you at that time to not seem clueless while explaining the content. There is pressure on you here, since you would appear foolish if you offered to teach something and didn’t have the concept understood. You learn 80% of what you experience because you do it on the spot, and have to correct errors during the process or it won’t work out. The pressure is on you there to continue through until you complete the procedure. You remember 70% of what you discuss with others because you have to have solid comprehension to be able to respond to others and their possible arguments or comments. This goes on for the other points. The more pressure there is on you to know the material, the higher the probability that it will be encoded into your cognition.
Create Pressure Where You Want To Improve
What do people who want to learn public speaking most quickly do? They join Toastmasters or a similar organization and place themselves in pressure-filled(early on at least) speaking environments with others watching them, or they go and find speaking engagements to take part in. This creates pressure where the improvement is desired. The pressure wasn’t provided by life, but by the choice of the pro-active individual. If you want to learn vocabulary for a standardized test, or for your own vocabulary expansion, put pressure on yourself to do so. Tell 20 people to test you at random times, find an online forum where there is a vocabulary contest, pick a book that has loads of words you don’t know and make a commitment to underline and then find the meaning of every word you don’t know, start using 5 new vocabulary words during the day each day so that people see you learning them, or e-mail me asking me to write a vocabulary eBook. You want to keep your desire running in the high retention rate activities, which are:
- discussing the concept with others
- experiencing the material in real-time action
- teaching the material to someone else
Say The Quote Aloud
Although you will probably remember the concept behind this quote, it would serve you well to say it to yourself out loud a couple of times, to use its own message to remember it better, and also to think about how you can start using the higher-end memory-creating methods. If anything, it will keep you from reading without acting on the learning, discussing it with others, or teaching it to someone.
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