sidedishes

Robert McKee's book 'Story' has a wondrous second part to the poem. I look up it to whenever hit with this dilemma.

(First, a retelling of the original)

> High above the forest floor, a millipede strolled along the branch of a tree, her thousand pairs of legs swinging in an easy gait. From the tree top, song birds looked down, fascinated by the synchronization of the millipede's stride. “That's an amazing talent,” chirped the songbirds. “You have more limbs than we can count. How do you do it?” And for the first time in her life the millipede thought about this. “Yes,” she wondered, “how do I do what I do?” As she turned to look back, her bristling legs suddenly ran into one another and tangled like vines of ivy. The songbirds laughed as the millipede, in a panic of confusion, twisted herself into a knot and fell to the earth below.

(The second part)

> On the forest floor, the millipede, realizing that only her pride was hurt, slowly, carefully, limb by limb, unraveled herself. With patience and hard work, she studied and flexed and tested her appendages, until she was able to stand and walk. What was once instinct became knowledge. She realized she didn’t have to move at her old, slow, rote pace. She could amble, strut, prance, even run and jump. Then, as never before, she listened to the symphony of the songbirds and let music touch her heart. Now in perfect command of thousands of talented legs, she gathered courage and, with a style of her own, danced and danced a dazzling dance that astonished all the creatures of her world.

I believe they all come from the single book, Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, referenced in the blog. All the terms in there are new words! (The breakdown you have is what I would've guessed too, though.)

I've beaten myself up many times in college for seemingly forgetting everything after classes finish. I spent a bunch of time trying to figure out how to learn and retain better. I tried Anki a bit but would inevitably forget things as soon as I stopped too. Forgetting is frustrating, and a situation where I -know- that I knew something before but not anymore is doubly so. But.. ultimately I think I've arrived at this view as well.

Your brain is not wired to remember things that you don't use. If you want to continue remembering, you have to continue engaging with the topic, and a lot of the advice in this thread is IMO just that (just, with a specific regimen / kind of engagement). It's completely natural to forget.

In fact, I'd go further and suggest embracing the forgetting and relearning cycle. If you really need to revisit the topic, you can relearn it again, and it'll be faster than the first time. And maybe you'll forget another time -- that's OK too, you can pick it up again even faster. In the end it's the discipline of relearning (the particular topic, and in general!) that actually continuously hardens. IMO there are parallels between this mindset and SRS -- though without the shame when you forget or miss a day of practice.