Consistency is better than intensity in many activities – like running a marathon or practising a hobby.
Leadership guru Simon Sinek uses the analogy of dental hygiene to explain this concept: getting your teeth cleaned once at the dentist will not improve your dental hygiene, but brushing your teeth twice every day will.
Learning works similarly. Cramming a lot of information in a short period of time means that important details are often lost. Spacing out learning activities over time, however, helps us to absorb more information and retain it longer.
Learning something new can take as little as five minutes a day – here are some ways to do so:
1. Learn a New Language on Drops
It can seem daunting to make time to pick up a new language. On the free version of the language app Drops, each learning session is capped at five minutes per day. The streaks feature also serves as motivation to add language learning into your daily routine.
2. Pick Up Programming on Mimo
This bite-sized learning app lets you learn the basics of coding at your own pace, whenever you have a few minutes to spare. You can also build up a portfolio of projects in common programming languages such as Python, JavaScript and HTML.
3. Watch an Explainer Video
If you are curious about a concept or subject but only want to know the basics, watch an explainer video. These condense the most important information about a topic into simple and digestible pointers, and tend to be short.
The RSA (Royal Society of Arts) has a playlist of animated explainers on thought-provoking topics such as toxic positivity and "outrospection". With each video being about 10 minutes long, they are perfect for watching during pockets of free time.