Throwback to a post when @hiro talked about how important it is to create more output from your learning than simply just taking in input, because just input alone is faux learning.

The golden ratio between the input and the output is 3:7. The definition of the ouput is write, talk, do (e.g., meet with someone, create, publish) and the one of the input is read and listen. Our growth is correlated to the amount of the output, not the input. Even if you do a lot of the input, they does not stay for long in your brain._ _**The input only would end up with just self satisfaction making you feel you learn something but almost nothing. The actual learning growth can be triggered by the output**.

I love this heuristic because I’m passionate about learning new things and ideas, but often struggle to retain and apply the input in my work or life. I read books for at least one hour everyday, and snack on fast blogs, tweets and posts on Facebook, Twitter, and 200wad throughout the day. So that’s perhaps about 2-3h of input on a daily basis. But my output hardly ever matches that level of input. I might sometimes write about it here on 200wad, or post on social media, but it seldom balances out. Only on the rare occasions when what I’m reading is directly applicable to work for the day/week, e.g. coding books. Therefore this 3:7 ratio could be highlighting out the root cause of why I cannot retain and apply learnings well enough.

How to retain learnings? Reading this article, learners retain approximately:

• 90% of what they learn when they teach someone else/use immediately.
• 75% of what they learn when they practice what they learned.
• 50% of what they learn when engaged in a group discussion.
• 30% of what they learn when they see a demonstration.
• 20% of what they learn from audio-visual.
• 10% of what they learn when they’ve learned from reading.
• 5% of what they learn when they’ve learned from lecture.

So from just reading, I’m probably only retaining only 10%, which is more or less true for me. No wonder I’m having difficulty! So while I get good inspiration from my daily reading habit, I really need to develop the complementary habit of creating output with it, be it teaching, writing, practising or talking/discussing it, at double the rate, at least. If I read a minimum of 1h per day, that means at least 2h of output! Since it’s difficult to dedicate stand-alone time for it, so it probably has to be weaved into my work itself, or as part of my writing here. 

More to think about to incorporate this output habit into my micro-habits system!