Practice made perfect?

While I was walking to work today, I am asking myself if I remember what I read a week ago. How about a month ago? I had a hard time remembering it. I blame it on information overload and there are just so much you can read nowadays. In addition to books & magazine, you have all the blogs (like mine :), you can read and after a while, everything is the same...

How can I make whatever I have read stick in my head? Back in the days when I was still in school, I used to read a text book multiple times (I know it's boring but it's part of study) and that process really made the "stuff" stick in my head. Seriously, up till today, I still remember some content of some books I read back in school. It's strange but it's true (at least for me). However, ever since I graduated from college, I have never read an article, let alone a book, twice. Maybe that's the learning process that I have been missing since after school?

If you think about the homework we did in school, I would argue that it has a similar effect. Homework forced us to repeat applying the same knowledge again and again. Eventually, those knowledge will just get stuck in our head without knowing about it and we just get smarter that way. Now, if you look at your life after school, how many times have you done the same thing more than once? It's a rare event for me. Maybe the phrase, "Practice made perfect" is true. I think the book, Outliers: The Story of Success mentioned one of the reasons someone is an expert is a field is that he just keeps doing the same thing again and again... It's on my to-read list. Will see when I read it...