The Knowledge Sprint

Can you name the longest Olympic outdoor running event? The shortest?

One is called a sprint, the other a marathon.

There are other important differences between the two races:

One is 100 meters long and the other is almost 42,195 meters long.

One takes the world's best runner 9.69 seconds, the other 7,566 seconds.

One is about moving as fast as possible in a short period of time and the other about pacing oneself to finish the race.

The acquisition of knowledge is frequently treated like a sprint, in reality it is a marathon, a marathon that lasts a life time. If you try to run a marathon like a sprint guess how it turns out? You give up, collapse, and fall out of the race. It's the same with knowledge. If you approach acquiring knowledge like a sprint you will burn up and drop out.

So what does this mean practically?

Imagine if you spent several hours today cramming to memorize 212 countries of the world until you could accurately identify them on a map. Now, without any more studying, how many of those countries do you think you will remember in 10 days? In 30 days? 90 days? A year? The truth is you probably have forgotten over 1/3 of them in 10 days, a half in 30 days, and almost all of them in 90 days. You see, learning all the countries in one day was a knowledge sprint. You learned them fast, but you also forgot them fast. At the end of a year, you most likely will only be able to remember a few of the new countries you learned.

The studying equivalent of sprinting is cramming. Cramming may help you pass an exam, but it does not promote long-term knowledge retention. So is cramming a good strategy? Is the time well spent? Well, not if the goal was to provide long-term knowledge. And even if the goal was just passing a test, wouldn't it be great if we could invest those same hours more effectively? Wouldn't it be great if we could learn the information in time for a test, and still remember the information long after? Wouldn't it be cool if we approached our training as if it was a knowledge marathon, and not a sprint?

HomeSchoolAdvantage.com provides a marathon view of knowledge acquisition. For example, we provide a method to learn the countries of the world with minimal study time while simultaneously achieving maximum recall. We want to maximize our return on invested study time and, if possible, to remember over 200 countries for years to come.

Imagine spending dramatically less time studying and getting dramatically better results. Is this possible? You bet it is - HomeSchoolAdvantage makes it possible.

Understand the difference between a sprint and a marathon, and it may change forever how you think about studying.