Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Actually, don’t. There’s value in repetition, and more than I think most people realize.
This isn’t about the benefits of active recall or spaced repetition.
It’s about how hearing things shapes your attention.
When someone tells you something that you already know, you aren’t learning something new.
But you are devoting mindshare to thinking about the thing.
And they’re telling you about the thing for a reason. So, spending a little mindshare on it is good.
You also get the opportunity to spend a large amount of mindshare on it, if you want to.
Sometimes, you don’t get a choice. The really good ideas don’t give us a choice.
Sometimes lesser ideas don’t give us a choice too, even though we’d like one. These can be our anxious thoughts.
This won’t be the last time I write a snippet about these ideas.