Believe it or not, I once lost my English skills after eight years of living abroad. As much as I loved living in Germany and speaking the language, my mother tongue underwent linguistic deskilling.

After moving back to an English-speaking country, I managed to improve my speed of expression and word selection.

But two things happened.

I stopped speaking German daily and that skill slowed down to a grind.

Plus, I stopped driving. Soon enough, my brain started deprecating that simple skill.

Even my guitar playing gets rusty if I don’t keep at it at least once a week.

More than just creating embarrassing experiences (especially on old episodes of my podcast), undergoing deskilling was a major wake-up call.

One we all need to heed because as artificial intelligence and automation ramp up, many of us are going to lose the skills we’ve needed for survival.

Including the practice we need to think clearly.

The good news is that deskilling doesn’t necessarily mean your brain has forgotten the skills entirely.

Your brain cells are just waiting for you to bring them back into action.

And in this post, I’ll give you some ideas for how to do just that.

Or if you do need to put some of your hard-earned skills on pause, you’ll discover ways to maintain them just enough so that you can hit the ground running when it’s time to relearn them.

Let’s dive in.

What is Cognitive Deskilling & Why Is It Accelerating Now?

Deskilling can refer to a few things, but generally means a loss or suppression of knowledge in a topic area or skill.

In the business world, deskilling happens when new technologies or processes reduce the skills needed to complete a job.

Usually, whatever a new tool or technique that has arrived on the scene allows for core activities to be done more cheaply or easily.

According to Harry Braverman in Labor and Monopoly Capital, these processes degrade professionals in the workforce because it strips away their personal control and engagement with the world.

This dark outcome is certainly possible, and might be part of what scientists call the Reverse Flynn Effect. That’s the term for a generational decline in intelligence scores around the world.

We also have to factor in the distractions of the Internet. Along with causing digital amnesia, many adults have “forgotten” how to socialize. Meanwhile, many young people aren’t learning good social skills at all.

How I First Realized I Was Undergoing Linguistic Deskilling

I was completely floored when I realized that you can actually lose command of your mother tongue. I’m still shocked.

It dawned on me while I was still living in Berlin that I was starting to struggle with recalling very simple English words.

That’s because I almost never used English.

And when I did, it was usually over Skype, a context that robbed my brain of many non-verbal cues that the brain needs to bring spoken communication to life.

When I got to Australia after eight years in Germany, I would sometimes listen back to Magnetic Memory Method Podcast episodes recorded during my years in Berlin.

The struggle was obvious, and the more I spoke English in Australia, the more I felt my English skills come back to life.

Working with many language learners over the years, I’ve realized just how easily bilingualism can be lost.

For example, I often help people who specialize in conference interpreting. Sometimes it’s to help them get into the field.

But often, I’m asked to help interpreters regain skills with languages they’ve watched fall apart through disuse.

Why the Brain Forgets Skills You’ve Slaved to Learn

As strange as it might seem, your brain is built to forget.

In fact, I’ve covered seven causes of forgetting in detail, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The big picture view is that people are right when they say “use it or lose it.”

The scientific explanation is called synaptic pruning.

When you stop practicing a skill, your brain literally assumes it’s no longer important to you. So it stops spending energy maintaining the neural pathways that support the skill.

First those pathways weaken.

Eventually they disconnect entirely.

Or at least, that’s one theory.

The memory scientist Richard Semon thought it highly unlikely that a complete disconnection takes place.

His theory of engrams and how information is chemically encoded in the brain suggested that traces always remain. With the right ecphory or contextual triggering, he thought it was possible to revive lost memories and old skills.

I believe he was on to something, and highly recommend a book about him called Forgotten Ideas, Neglected Pioneers: Richard Semon and the Story of Memory.

But long before I knew anything about him, I found myself losing my native language, just like the people discussed in this New York Times assessment of how easy it is to lose fluency in your mother tongue.

The question was, how was I going to get my linguistic intelligence back? And keep it?

Here are four ways that have worked for me. People who have contributed to my testimonials page report similar success.

Strategy #1: Ritual Repetition with Purpose

Since we know that deskilling happens when neurons disconnect, strategic reconnection is key.

I’ve practiced a basic ritual to keep my German skills basically intact, primarily through reading and listening.

As an avid fan of philosophy, from Nietzsche to the Advaita Vedanta at the core of The Victorious Mind, I read German books and articles that force me to think in the language.

I also listen to podcasts weekly and at least one video interview with a German author, musician or artist.

This ritual is not about drills in German.

It’s about encounters with meaning.

I could definitely do more to meet and speak with people in German.

But I’ve found that if I just keep reading, writing and listening to the language, I can get back into the flow of speaking the language relatively quickly.

This approach works because of the levels of processing effect, or what I often call the Big Five of Language learning.

Except in this case, I’m only maintaining part of the learning cycle elements. As a result, a sufficient number of connections survive in the brain to make the skill easier and faster to revive later.

Strategy #2: Engage All the Senses & Embody the Skill

Most skills involve movement.

So when I wanted to revive my driving skills, I had to get in a car and drive.

It sounds obvious, but how often do we say “someday,” only to wait until our skills are so atrophied, we’ve completely eliminated the possibility of relearning them?

Just as getting behind the wheel and spending lots of hours driving re-skilled my brain, I often have to make myself play my guitars to physically engage with the instruments.

Sure, I can think intellectually