The ongoing pandemic has undoubtedly altered the way team members work together. With countless distractions happening from home, focusing on team work can become much more difficult.
However, some aspects of working from home have made learning easier in that we are able to “space” our learning abilities. For instance, the AGES (attention, generation, emotions and spacing) learning model by David Rock from the Neuroleadership Institute has revealed the impact that the downtime between learning and reviewing, or spacing, has on our retention.
Remote working allows us to take advantage of this process as we have the ability to time between learning and reviewing sessions to improve our long-term memory.
Ideally, spacing takes into account sleeping and how important it is for retaining information in the long-term. According to research from the Neuroleadership Institute, sleeping offers the most optimal environment for new processes to be stored in the long-term.
For those in the workplace, the end goal should be optimizing new information and being able to apply it in the long-run. The research suggests that in order to properly process new information, it should be revisited at least three times — the first within a few days, the second within a few weeks and the last in a few months.
Although remote working hurts socialization and interactions with colleagues, companies can take advantage of the opportunities that come with memory retention and upskilling workers for the long-term.