In this week’s Torah portion Rashi, an 11th-century commentator, notes the frequent pauses between commands. He explains these breaks functioned to give Moshe time to understand each lesson after it was taught. Rashi expounds that if Moshe needed extra time, all the more so we need it when learning.
The time crunch
In today’s world, we are often pressed for time. There is so much demanding our attention that is tempting to take shortcuts. Why not quickly skim an email, article or book with the bare minimum understanding to accomplish a task and move on to the next order of business?
How to effectively save time
When people don’t give a task their full attention and absorb what they have learned the memory is not encoded and is essentially lost. Experiments show that when we multitask and quickly jump from one activity to another we end up spending more time to complete projects and master material than if we had focused on each task individually. Aside from taking the time to focus and internalize acquired knowledge, it is important to get adequate sleep. It is during this time that memories are processed and stored securely in long term memory for future retrieval.
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