We spend thousands of dollars to get a degree just to forget most of the information we studied so hard to memorize. In 1885 German psychologists Hermann Ebbinghaus ran some experiments with himself where he attempted to memorize 2300 made up words. After waiting a day to test himself after he stopped studying he could only remember one third of the content, by the second day only 5% was retained. This 19th century study is consistent with 21st century study where students are retested weeks after successfully passing a test just realize they’ve forgotten most of the information. While our education is focused on the assumption that a high grade means you’ve mastered the data you’re required for your line of work, the reality is that by the time the student is employed they will have forgotten most of it.
This is not only inconvenient for the student and employer, it can be outright dangerous depending on the line of work. There are many professions that will require the memorization of vast amounts of information and a vast increase in their vocabulary (think of medicine, law, finance). There have been further studies showing us methods to improve our chances. One method of study that has shown increase our chances of retention is by dividing intervals of study and rest, this creates a phenomena called “the spacing effect.”
The objective of this app is to make it simple for the busy professional to access the spacing effect through a “casual game” (I game you take a few minutes to play and then put down. This way we hit two birds with one stone: You are able to reliably sneak in time to review the content of your profession while at the same time this is the best method used to retained the studied content. How much of an advantage would you have by being the one person in the room that has actually retained most of the information from their field while your competitors have forgotten much of it?
The other aspect to retaining information is that you need to constantly come across it. Use it or lose it. In order to encourage you to keep going back and studying the content we’ve made the app into a multiplayer game were you can compete with colleagues and other professionals in your field. Our goal is that a[your group of colleagues will become like your annoying gym buddies and get you to train with them in order to achieve your self-improvement goals. We want to see a group of professionals that will be competitors but also cheerleaders, and help each other improve their skill set inside and out of the game.