This week I want to tell you what happened to me when I got started in the industry.
You may have read a little about my background and how I started with Demilec in the spray foam insulation industry back in 2004.
Within a week of joining the company, I was sitting in a hotel ballroom, with 20 other students, mostly business owners and applicators, attending a 4-day training class learning about spray foam insulation – types of SPF, spray techniques, spray equipment… the works.
Afterward, like the business owners and applicators sitting in the training class, I left feeling a little dazed. While there are many factors that affect learning, a student in a training course like this will often forget up to 50% of the information within a week, it can be overwhelming.
A lot of information was shared during that four days, a little too much, too quick for me to remember it all, luckily we had resource materials to refer back to later.
And, in my case, the very next month, I was back in the same hotel ballroom, with another 20 students, in another 4-day training class, watching the same presentations, from the same presenters. Information that I remembered was reinforced and I was reminded of information that I forgot, from my first attendance.
Over the next thirteen months I attended another eleven contractor training classes, picking up something new every time.
This is spaced repetition and it’s one of the best learning techniques in education.
Specifically approaching a training program with a planned course of action to review the data, then put that information into action, you then come back and review the same information again at a later date, maybe a day, a week or a month later, and you get more from it because you are coming at the information from a different angle, based on your new experience.
This learning methodology leverages two key forms of knowledge in the learning process: learned knowledge and activity knowledge. This continued process of learning information and using it, reviewing it again and then using it, is known as spaced repetition.
Remember, your mind is a muscle, and spaced repetition works your mind like lifting weights works your body.
Now, I am not saying that you should go to a contractor training class every month, but what if you could?
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