Resurfacing important ideas

Once you’ve been exposed to a useful idea, you have a certain amount of runway before you forget it — could be weeks, months, maybe years.

Extending the runway is as simple as revisiting the idea on a regular basis: it’s rereading the passage, rewatching the film, bringing it up again in your next meeting.

I recently started to reread a few books that I’d read years ago and it feels like I’m reading them for the first time. Their ideas, along with my ability to apply them to my life, had long since expired.

To avoid the same fate, I now leave one of these books on my desk with particularly important sections bookmarked. And every day I invest a few minutes in revisiting at least one of the bookmarked sections.

The ideas I once found important several years ago, and once again more recently, are more durable this way and I’m able to slowly but surely apply them to my life.

I think a key part of any personal growth journey is finding ways to continually resurface important ideas in our day-to-day lives until they’re fully integrated.

It’s one thing to acquire knowledge and another to apply it. And in order to apply it well, we have to remember.