REASON 1:
Information Overload
āYou mentioned that the first reason we donāt do what we know is that we suffer from information overload,ā said the author. āWe simply have too much knowledge. How does spaced repetition affect that?ā
āGood question,ā Phil said. āInformation overload leads to some real problems. It immobilizes us.ā
āThatās painful to hear,ā said the author. āI just experienced that very thing recently at a golf school. Iām a golf nut, so I decided to go to a three-day school to improve my game. But I got the opposite resultāI got worse.ā
āReally?ā
āYes. They taught me too much. When I got back home and tried to play, I was awful. I had paralysis by analysis. I was working on so many things at the same time I became immobilized.ā
āIāve heard about that,ā said the entrepreneur. āIt must have been discouraging.ā
āGiven what you know about information overload, what good is it to read one book after another or attend seminar after seminar?ā asked the author.
āThereās nothing wrong with reading books and attending seminars,ā Murray replied. āThese are fundamental learning tools, and we need them. The problem comes when we expose ourselves to new knowledge all the time with no pause for integrating our new know-how and putting it into action. If we continue to expose ourselves this way, we become brain cluttered. This is why so many people are drowning in a sea of information.ā
āSo whatās the answer?ā asked the author.
āLet me answer your question with a question,ā said Phil. āWhy doesnāt a fish drown when it is constantly swimming in a drowning environment?ā
āInteresting question,ā said the author with a smile. āCould fish be smarter than we are?ā
āNot really,ā said the entrepreneur with a laugh. āBut they do have a built-in monitoring system that helps them take from the water only what they need and nothing else. Something we as human beings could use when it comes to dealing with the overwhelming amount of information available to us today.ā
āIt sounds like a matter of focus,ā said the author.
āI think youāre right,ā the entrepreneur replied. āWe have to decide what we need to learn to help us perform better and then go about it with vigor.ā
āItās interesting,ā said the author. āA friend of mine, Denny, went to a golf school recently that was very different from the one I attended, and heās playing much better.ā
āThat must frost you,ā said Phil. āWhat was the difference in the two schools?ā
āExactly what we are talking about,ā said the author. āThe difference was focus. The first day they analyzed all parts of his game on video. Then they picked three or four learning goals for him while he was at the school, and they would not teach him one more new thing until he graduated.ā
āGraduated?ā asked Phil.
āTo graduate from a learning goal, he had to hit ten shots. On each shot, he had to tell one of their pros whether he was doing what they had taught him or not. If he wasnāt, he had to tell them how he needed to correct his error for the next shot.ā
āGood example,ā said the entrepreneur. āThey made sure he could use what they had taught him. Daniel Webster, the originator of Websterās dictionary, said that he preferred to totally master a few good books rather than read widely. To drive the point home, to totally master something, I think itās imperative that we bathe in it until we saturate our entire being. We must slowly chew and digest it until it becomes a part of us.ā
āI think thatās a little over the top, but I get the point,ā said the author. āYouāre emphatic about that. It sounds like our friend, spaced repetition.ā
āIt sure is,ā said the entrepreneur. āItās been said that your mental constitution is more affected by a small amount of material thoroughly mastered through spaced repetition than by twenty books you read only once. The habit of attending a seminar only one time or reading a book once, while exposing yourself to new information, just builds the habit of forgetting. We are training ourselves to know and not do. Itās really the exact opposite of what we should be doing.ā
āCould you tell me more about the habit of forgetting? I do have a tendency to forget a lot of what I read and hear.ā
āThe human mindāeveryoneās, including yours and mineāis in the constant process of doing one of two things: itās either learning something new or forgetting. If we neglect something, we soon forget it. When we focus on something with spaced repetition, we remember it.ā
āDoes that mean thereās no value in attending a good seminar just once?ā
āOf course there is some value,ā said Phil, ābut attending the same seminar a number of times with a pen and notepad would be better than just once. Itās one way you can escape the āforgettery process.ā The same has also been said about a book. Read it again and again, underlining it, highlighting it, and writing down key ideas. Then review your learnings again.ā
āSo it sounds like you donāt do the same thing when you read a book or go to a seminar a second or third time.ā
āAbsolutely,ā said Phil. āThe first time I read a book I decide I want to learn from, I just read it straight through to get a sense of it. The second time I read it and underline the key concepts. The third time I might take notes. The fourth time I could choose to read it with a learning partner. And it is important to do all this over a period of time. We all have to develop our own strategy to keep our interest and zero in on what we want to apply and use in our lives.ā
āIs all that really necessary?ā asked the author.
āUnfortunately, yes, from my experience,ā said Phil. āTo truly master an area, people should immerse themselves in a focused amount of information, rather than be exposed to a large amount.ā
āAnd they should do it repeatedly, is what I hear you saying,ā said the author.
āYes,ā said the entrepreneur. āPeople should learn less information more often, rather than learn more information less often.ā
āDo you mean, for example, that rather than reading a large number of books, people should read a smaller number of books more times?ā asked the author.
āYes,ā said the entrepreneur, āspaced repetition is the key, and
APPLYING THE LESS-MORE PHILOSOPHY
When the author arrived at Dwayneās office, he found an elder statesman who had been working with the entrepreneur for many years. Dwayne had an easy style and grace that was inviting. When he smiled and told the author to have a seat in the discussion area of his office, the author felt privileged.
āSo Philās been talking to you about closing the learning-doing gap,ā Dwayne said.
āHe sure has,ā said the author. āIāve seen how peopleāincluding myselfāhave a real challenge closing that gap. Phil says that people have to learn less more.ā
Dwayne smiled. āThat philosophy drives everything we do in our training, development, and educational efforts in all the companies that the entrepreneur owns.ā
āWhat do you think about that philosophy?ā asked the author. āDoes it really work?ā
Dwayne nodded. āBefore I started working with Phil, I was the typical training director. I spent more time looking for the next new management concept than I did following up what Iād just taught our people. I would help design a tremendous training program, run everybody through it, and then look for the next new training idea. The way I judged my effectiveness was by attitudinal evaluations that participants filled out at the end of a seminar about how they liked it. We always got high grades, but the trainings werenāt all that effective. People didnāt really apply what we were teaching them.ā
āHow did you change that?ā asked the author.
āWhen we learned from Phil that less learned more is best, we began to concentrate on a few key concepts we felt people should learn. Spaced repetition became our motto. Now we teach important concepts over and over again, until they become ingrained in the way people think and behave.ā
āSo youāre spending more time following up training than creating new training programs?ā
āYes,ā said Dwayne. āWe spend significantly more time on follow-up than we do designing, organizing, and delivering our training. And we think our people are better trained than anyone, anywhere.ā
It sounded good, but the author was skeptical. āCould you give me an example?ā he asked.
āSure,ā said Dwayne. āA number of years ago, we decided that we wanted to create legendary customer service. We didnāt want to merely satisfy customersāwe wanted to blow them away. When you deliver legendary service, customers are so excited about how you treat them that they want to brag about you. They become part of your sales force. We decided this would be an ongoing effort. We would drill deep, teaching less more, and repeat the teaching again and again.ā
The author raised an eyebrow. āSo howās that working for you?ā he asked.
āWeāve seen measurableāand sometimes dramaticāresults in both customer and employee satisfaction. Weāre constantly training and updating our people on new ideas about how to give legendary customer service. If any new concept comes along in customer service, we integrate it into what we are already doing, rather than sending our people off in a different direction.ā
āThatās interesting,ā said the author. āI gave a speech at a company recently, and they had a big banner behind me on the stage that said, āThe Year of the Customer.ā When I saw it, I laughed and said, āWhatās next year?ā After talking to you, Iām sure you know why I said that. It seemed to me that every year should be the year of your customer. After talking to you and Phil, I guess the way you make that happen is to reinforce the message year after year through spaced repetition.ā
āAbsolutely,ā said Dwayne. āThatās why weāre constantly pushing our people to get better at delivering legendary service. Rather than a Book of the Month Club, we give our people a few books for the whole year. We pick out the best customer service books we can find and have everyone read them several times, continuing to cull useful information from them. We want to apply what we read if it makes sense to us.
āEveryone also goes through a two-day legendary service training program every year. The concepts we teach are the same, but we teach them differently each year. We also bring in some new concepts but make sure they are well integrated into what they learned last y...