{"id":54361,"date":"2021-11-13T11:23:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-13T15:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=54361"},"modified":"2021-11-16T17:02:45","modified_gmt":"2021-11-16T21:02:45","slug":"use-it-or-lose-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/use-it-or-lose-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding the Use-It-or-Lose-It Tendency"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What is the use-it-or-lose-it tendency? How do you stop valuable skills from depreciating?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The use-it-or-lose-it tendency is the inclination of skills to decline over time if unused. It is impossible to say the level of skill that would be lost within a set period of time, but skills that have been mastered will depreciate more slowly than skills that have not been fully developed. You can prevent skill depreciation by constantly practicing skills you can\u2019t afford to lose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read on to learn more about the use-it-or-lose-it tendency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>What It Is<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>All skills attenuate with disuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Skills that are trained to fluency will be lost more slowly and, even if lost, will come back faster with new learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We can see this in our lives with the example of picking up a long-abandoned musical instrument we mastered through hours of practice in our childhood. It will still be possible to play the instrument, but the ability to maintain the same level of performance we had when the instrument was mastered would have decreased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Why It Evolved<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>All neural circuits have the tendency to decay over time if unused. This is probably useful for brain efficiency, since unused circuits are pruned to make way for more useful ones.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>How It Can Be Harmful<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>If you don\u2019t practice flexible thinking and exercise your <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/increase-focus\/\">mental models<\/a>, you risk becoming a one-dimensional thinker. You\u2019ll fall prey to the man-with-a-hammer syndrome, where you approach every problem with the same blunt tool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Examples of the Use-It-or-Lose-It Tendency<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>The pianist Paderewski said that if he failed to practice for a single day, he\u2019d notice his performance deteriorate. After a week, the audience would notice it too.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Antidotes<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Continuously practice the skills you can\u2019t afford to lose, much like fighter pilots in simulators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Munger likes using a checklist to recall important skills and concepts.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Learn important skills to fluency so you can better recall them later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is the use-it-or-lose-it tendency? How do you stop valuable skills from depreciating? The use-it-or-lose-it tendency is the inclination of skills to decline over time if unused. It is impossible to say the level of skill that would be lost within a set period of time, but skills that have been mastered will depreciate more slowly than skills that have not been fully developed. You can prevent skill depreciation by constantly practicing skills you can\u2019t afford to lose. Read on to learn more about the use-it-or-lose-it tendency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":54364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,43],"tags":[533],"class_list":["post-54361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-career","category-self-improvement","tag-poor-charlies-almanack","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Understanding the Use-It-or-Lose-It Tendency - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The use-it-or-lose-it tendency is the inclination of skills to decline over time if unused. Here is how to prevent skill depreciation.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/use-it-or-lose-it\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Understanding the Use-It-or-Lose-It Tendency\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The use-it-or-lose-it tendency is the inclination of skills to decline over time if unused. 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