When you sit down to study, forgetting what you just read can feel like the enemy. You re-read the same line, review the same concept, and it still seems it’s slipping away. What if forgetting isn’t a bug, but a feature? Neuroscience suggests that forgetting—and the act of ‘spacing out—may be one of your brain’s most effective tools for learning. 

Why We Forget

Our brains are not made to store every new piece of information indefinitely. In reality, memory works as a filter: it holds onto what is useful and discards what’s not. Psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, well-known for his ‘forgetting curve,’ was one of the first to show that our brains were capable of severe memory decay— close to 70% of what we learn will be lost within 24 hours after we learn it, and that is without a follow-up. This sounds disheartening at first, but when considering forgetting as an opportunity, it becomes tremendously encouraging! 

Forgetting creates extra work for our brains to pull up the information, and that work strengthens the memory trace, making it more stable. Think about it like a muscle: it’s the strain that makes us stronger.

The Power of Spaced Study

Enter spaced study—the research-backed learning strategy where you review information spaced out over time, rather than crammed into a single session. Research indicates, when we permit ourselves to forget just enough before reviewing the material, the relearning requires a refreshing of the memory, solidifying it much more than if we had never forgotten it.  This is why ‘spacing out’ and even breaks during study periods are not time wasted. These breaks are a conscious part of how memory consolidation works. Sleep, rest, and even mind-wandering allow the brain to reorganize and strengthen its neural connections. 

Forgetting as a Learning Enemy

Here are a few ways forgetting creates learning, rather than destroying it: 

• Stronger Retrieval: Retrieving information after some forgetting will require more mental processing, which strengthens it into long-term memory. 
• Pattern Recognition: Forgetting specific details will cause the brain to focus on the conceptual big picture, create those connections between ideas. 
• More Efficient Storage: By’ forgetting’unnecessary clutter, your brain accepts what knowledge you are capable of or going to use, and puts it in an order of priority.

Using Forgetting to Learn Better

• Decide when to space your practicing: Instead of cramming material in one long study session, revisit the information over the course of a few days or weeks.
• Decide when to use retrieval practice: Testing yourself on the information, rather than just rereading your notes or handouts, will help you learn the material. Struggling to get back to something you learned makes it stick in your brain.
• Decide when to use sleep: When you finish a tough piece of material, go to bed. Your brain will continue to learn that material as you sleep.
• Decide when to start mixing it up: Rotating study topics will keep you moving. By changing your task, you will forget the old information, and re-strengthen it when you come back to it.
• Forgetting is not failure. Forgetting is your brain’s natural way of learning. Each time that you ‘’re-learn’ knowledge that you nearly forgot, you are creating stronger, more robust knowledge. So the next time your mind wanders to a lazy, unproductive place, or a fact that you just studied slips your mind, don’t panic; it is simply your brain doing its job of turning temporally learned material into lasting knowledge.