26 years to learn English!
In 1984, Piotr Wozniak was a twenty-year-old student at Poland’s Poznam university.
He started learning English in the typical way — he memorized lists of words and translations.
But Piotr wasn’t typical.
First, he was ambitious. He heard the poor English of his friends and didn’t want to accept their level.
Second, he was analytical. He calculated the number of words he needed and how fast he was forgetting them and discovered it would take 26 years.
Third, he was optimistic.
“There MUST be a better way,” he thought.
So he quit his biology studies and focused full-time on memory.
There were just three small problems…
Problem Number One: The army wanted him.
In communist Poland, every young man was required to serve one year in the army.
But that would mean leaving his important memory research.
So he walked down to the army office and told the man there that they did “not want to have an angry man with a gun in their ranks.”
It must have worked, because the army never called him and he stayed at his university for another five years.
Problem Number Two: He needed to transfer his method from paper to software, but he had no money for a computer.
During communism, the exchange rate between the East and the West was horrible.
Piotr remembers once being in Holland and not being able even to afford a public toilet.
But one day, he found a great deal on a used German Amstrad-Schneider PC 1512.
And luckily, a relative was willing to lend him the money to buy it.
Ironically, his research slowed down as a result of this. You see, in order to pay back the loan, he had to skip meals to save money on food, which made focusing difficult, which slowed down his work.
But in the end, it worked out, and the world now has the answer to the last unanswered memory question…
WHEN is the best time to review?
And the answer is…..
Right Before You Forget
If you review too soon, it’s too easy and your brain doesn’t get a workout.
If you review too late, you’ve already forgotten it and your brain doesn’t get a workout.
But when you wait until juuuuuust before he was about to forget, that’s when you’re able to remember thousands of words a year.
According to Piotr, using this method, he learned over 10,000 pieces of information in one year.
He spent only 40 minutes a day.
And he was able to remember 96% of new words months after learning them.
Here was his review schedule:
review in one day
review in two days
review in four days
review in eight days
review in sixteen days
review in 32 days
And if you forget a word, go back to the beginning.
Now, you can do this yourself.
Just keep detailed and careful notes so you know when to review each word.
Or you can use a free software program that uses Piotr’s algorithm and does the work for you.
It tells you the perfect time to review for maximum learning speed.
Arthur Chu used this same software to prepare for and win the most difficult American quiz show Jeopardy!… a record eleven times!
American opera singer Gabriel Wyner used this same software to quickly learn Italian, French and German for the stage.
And this is the same software used by two-time Swedish memory champion Jonas von Essen.