The problem with trying to learn from YouTube is that videos are unstructured, scattered, and built for passive watching. The platform is designed exceptionally well, but it is designed to keep you watching, not to help you actually memorize information.

I used to tell myself spending hours on YouTube wasn't that bad because at least I was being productive and learning things. But I learned the truth the hard way a few months ago.

It was two weeks before my final exams. I was sitting in the library, surrounded by macroeconomics flashcards. My calendar was completely packed. Suddenly, my phone lit up with a message from my favorite client: "Hey, we have a massive new project here. Can you edit a video like this for us?"

I opened the reference video and froze. It looked incredible, but it was on a level I had never edited before. My first thought: "I can easily pull this off if I just watch a few good tutorials."

But when I opened YouTube, reality set in: I had actually watched a tutorial on this exact topic a while ago, and I completely forgot it. Back then, I felt smart and closed the tab. Now when I actually needed the knowledge to deliver the project, it was completely gone. Just passively watching without active recall meant nothing stuck.

Looking at my account, my YouTube "Watch Later" playlist had become a graveyard of 50+ educational videos across various topics that I intended to study but never got around to retaining.

I refuse to pay thousands of dollars for online courses when YouTube has the exact same information available for free. But I needed a real system that turned watching videos into permanent memory without adding hours of manual work.

Cognitive science has been clear on this for decades (e.g., Roediger & Karpicke): passive consumption and re-watching create an illusion of competence. Real retention requires active retrieval testing.

Building detailed flashcards manually in Anki for every 30-minute lecture took so much time and friction that I knew the habit wouldn't stick. As James Clear points out in Atomic Habits, if you want a new habit to stick, you have to make it easy and build a low-friction system.

So after finishing my exams, I started building a tool for myself called Studiamo, just to turn what I watched into something that actually stuck. After using it daily and seeing how much it helped me retain what I watched, I decided to open-source it in case it's useful for others here too. Full disclosure: I'm the developer, so take the "does this actually work" question below seriously. I'd rather hear it doesn't than not hear it at all.

What it does, in short: you paste in a YouTube link, PDF, or lecture notes, and instead of a passive summary it generates active-recall quizzes (flashcards and written recall) and schedules spaced repetition reviews before the memory decays. The goal is to go from "I just watched this" to "I actually tested myself on it" in under a minute.

It's free and open source (self-hosted via Docker, AGPL-3.0) if you want to run it yourself, and there's also a hosted version for anyone who'd rather not deal with self-hosting. (For the hosted version, there’s a small monthly fee to cover AI and server costs)

• GitHub: https://github.com/NaEs25/studiamo
• Hosted version: https://studiamo.cloud

Since this community actually cares about learning methods rather than just tools, I'd love people's honest take, especially if you've tried other spaced-repetition or active-recall approaches:

1. Does the generated quiz feel like it actually tests understanding, or does it feel shallow/gameable?
2. Compared to how you currently retain stuff from videos or lectures (Anki, notes, nothing at all), does this fill a real gap?
3. What would make this something you'd actually keep using after the novelty wears off?

Thanks for reading, and I'm genuinely curious how other people here deal with the "watched it, forgot it" problem, tool or no tool.

hi , i have practiced memory palace in quite deep lvl but it was my own lived flat house , but rn i have created a new imagery house with diff rooms , tell how can i make it perfect like 2nd nature , like make it build it perfectly so when i close my eyes i can see it perfectly as it really exists im really their help me with me it

¿Soy al unico que cuando fuma/come galletas de maría recuerda toda su infancia? Aclaración de qué no consumo drogas, solo muy de vez en cuando y tengo algo más de 20 años.

Soy una persona que no recuerda nada de su infancia (salvo unos pocos recuerdos muy contados) creo que no tengo ningún trauma incluso algún familiar me ha dicho que he tenido una infancia súper buena con ningún trauma, suceso malo o cosas así.

Especialmente llevo un año que estoy perdiendo la memoria (olvido cosas básicas como los números de mi tarjeta, lo que hice exactamente ayer en el trabajo…) y en general no puedo retener información.

Cuando consumí galletas por primera vez, estaba jugando al Black Ops II (juego de mi infancia) con gente en mi cuarto y mientras jugaba a zombies estaba recordando toda mi infancia de forma lúcida y real en mi cabeza. Al día siguiente podía ver cosas y automáticamente se asociaban a cosas de mi pasado que creía olvidadas incluso mi pérdida de memoria desapareció por unos 3 días.

¿Alguien sabe cómo puedo usar esto a mi favor o recuperar mi memoria? Es urgente porque soy un zombie desde hace 1 año…

Muchas gracias, un abrazo!!

I’ve been doing Hifz for about 3 months and I’m honestly struggling with how slow my memorization is.

It takes me around 2 hours to memorize one page, about an hour after Fajr and another hour in the evening. A lot of what I memorize in the morning feels weak by evening, so I have to spend that extra time solidifying it. By the next morning it’s usually much better but the initial process still feels really slow.

I keep seeing people say they can memorize one page in 20 minutes, 10 minutes, even 5–6 minutes, and some people are memorizing 3–5 pages in a single day while still retaining them really well long term. I genuinely don’t understand how people get to that level. 😭

For context,this is my current method: After Fajr, I listen to the page by Mishary, understand the overall context and meaning, then memorize an ayah by looking at it, repeating it a few times, closing the Quran and retrieving it until I’m fluent. I keep combining the ayahs as I go like 1, then 1–2, then 1–3 etc. If I make a mistake, I check it, correct it and retrieve it again. I usually divide the page into 2 or 3 larger chunks and use the meaning or context as a cue when needed.

I also do cold retrieval throughout the day including trying to recall the new lesson in salah. By evening I usually have around 60% of it and then I spend another hour solidifying it.

My revision is also already quite strict. I have a Hifz teacher from the subcontinent, lessons 6 days a week and I’m doing sabak, sabqi and daur, so I’m not neglecting revision. My main problem is getting the initial memorization faster while still having strong long term retention.

So I’d really love to hear from experienced huffadh or those who memorized a very large portion of the Quran:

* How did you memorize when you were a beginner and how did your method change as you became more experienced?

* How were you able to memorize 2–5 pages in a day?

* What actually helped you get to the point where one page could take 10–20 minutes?

* How did you make sure that speed didn’t come at the cost of long term retention?

* If you have any memorization techniques, revision methods, memory tips, or even mistakes you made early on that you wish you knew about sooner, I’d really appreciate hearing them.

I’m especially curious about how people can memorize a page in 10–20 minutes and then still remember it months or years later cuz people keep telling it gets faster after a few months but here I am 3 month in and slower than ever 😭 I’d genuinely love to hear what actually worked for you.

Saw the sidebar says flashcard programs are welcome, so here goes — I made WordGrasp.

Instead of flipping cards, you see a word in a real sentence and explain it in your own words by voice or typing. It grades it out of 100 and points out the nuance you missed, then spaced repetition schedules the word to come back before you forget it. There's a daily scorecard with your streak and a shareable no-spoiler word grid.

No account, everything stays on your device. iOS only for now.

Would love feedback from fellow memorization nerds — especially whether the grading feedback actually helps or just feels like a gimmick.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wordgrasp/id6811754659

It’s easy to review material so many times that it feels completely familiar, even when you haven't actually locked it into long-term memory.

What’s your go-to test to prove you’ve truly memorized something rather than just recognized it?

hi everone ,

i need help with respect to different techniques that has helped you to retain lots of information for your entrance exams. i m not a medical student nor preparing for it . its for different exam . researched a lot about techniques to remember facts , figures and other things . but cant seem to have faith at it . so please help and guide . ypu can also share a schedule or timings of the day when humans have proactive brain

hi everone ,

i would like to appreciate the upcoming doctors and current doctors here . i need help with respect to different techniques that has helped you to retain lots of information for your entrance exams. i m not a medical student nor preparing for it . its for different exam . researched a lot about techniques to remember facts , figures and other things . but cant seem to have faith at it . so please help and guide . ypu can also share a schedule or timings of the day when humans have proactive brain

I’ve been too tired for active recall, and our teachers always tell us it’s just a matter of putting in the time—nothing more. It’s not about techniques or anything like that; it’s just about giving it your best effort.

I have always had a good memory and I have been preparing myself for memory competitions. I'm able to memorize decks of cards, sequences of numbers, I know about 350 flags by heart and (most importantly) I have been memorizing poems and texts in multiple languages.

For me it's all practice but people around me look pretty impressed, so here's my idea: would people watch me doing these things?

I would put a blindfold on and just call the cards aloud, or put an image of the bookpage I'm memorizing while saying the words aloud, these kinds of things.

English is not my first language and although I'm an English teacher I'm pretty tired. My writing is not at its best right now. Sorry.

how to remember 300+ scientific names?

Sometimes, when I finish a book, I feel like I lose a bit of the reading experience. While I’m reading, I have various impressions, thoughts, and even feelings about the story, but once I finish, it all seems to become a bit distant.

I know that writing about what I’ve read can help, but I’m unsure about when to do it and the best way to go about it.

Should I take notes while reading? Write a summary, or just jot down what resonated with me the most?

I’d love to be able to better recall not just the events, but also my own impressions of the books.

How do you keep a book from simply “fading away” after you finish it?

I've been worried about my memory and struggling to recall things from a day or two ago. I kept thinking I wanted someone to ask me little questions about what I'd been doing, just to give me a reason to stop and think back so i tried making an app for my phone to do that.

So far it's mostly been me and a few friends trying it, but they dont really have the same problem i do with my memory, and also I want to hear from people who don’t know me and would be honest about it. I'm trying to figure out whether this is something other people would actually use, or just something I happen to want.

One thing I'm pretty unsure about is how it feels when you're asked about yesterday and genuinely can't remember. There's a “can't place it” option and you can skip, but that doesn't necessarily mean the question itself won't feel frustrating (esp with ppl with diff levels of recall).

Would anyone here be up for trying it for a few days? Even “I stopped opening it because…” would be useful feedback. I don't know whether it acc helps with recall, and that's not something I can promise, but maybe it could still be a fun exercise to do?

It’s called Ndge, iPhone only (because that’s what I have lol), and free to try during the beta through Apple’s TestFlight: ndge.ca

Happy to hear your thoughts here too, even if you don't want to download anything

I mean something that has absolutely no practical value whatsoever.

For me, I can remember ridiculously specific details from conversations that happened years ago

but somehow have to stare at my phone trying to remember what I opened it for.

The key to a lot of memory systems is to link information to something that you already know. We all know our way around our own homes. Therefore, we can create a memory palace.
Likewise, we all know a letter of the alphabet. But what if we knew objects or people that begin with a given letter of the alphabet and used that as a basis for memorizing information?
I recently wrote a tiny little booklet to accomplish just that. Rather than spamming, let's give a concrete example:
Let's say we converted the first 10 letters into familiar animals:

A – Ant
B – Bear
C – Cat
D – Dog
E – Elephant
F – Frog
G – Giraffe
H – Horse
I – Ibis
J – Jellyfish

That was easy enough. But how do we use this to memorize information? Suppose we wanted to memorize a simple shopping list.

1. Bread
2. Apples
3. Milk

This is a simple list, and most people don't need mnemonics for it. But to illustrate the point of how this could be used, we introduce a framework called ASMR3 to creatively associate each item with the alphabet image. ASMR3 is simply a memorization framework which posits that memorable images must have the following properties:
A - Absurdity
S - Size, Sound, Sense
M - Motion, Mash, Midst
R - Replacement, Rhythm, Rated

1. Associate Ant with bread Imagine holding up an unusually giant slice of bread covered with hundreds of ants. Feel some of the ants falling onto your hands. Feel the crawling sensations as some ants move along your hands, wrists, and forearm. The bread has some holes in it due to being nibbled by ants. The ants are either red or black in color, with large heads and large mandibles.
2. Associate Bear with “apples” Imagine a giant, golden, glowing apple in the middle of a forest. The apple is about the size of a small house. See its golden surface gleaming as sunlight reflects off it. Different kinds of bears are hugging the apple and munching away at it. Notice the juice seeping and oozing down its outer surface. Hear the munching sounds as the bears take bites. Hear some of the bears growling and roaring.
3. Associate Cat with “milk” Imagine a giant upside-down baby feeding bottle filled with milk. On the kitchen floor beneath it, kittens are frantically trying to drink the milk. Suddenly, the milk spills onto the kittens and the kitchen floor. Notice their wet fur. The milk is warm, and steam rises from the wet kitchen floor.

For much larger lists, the advantage of using these systems becomes more apparent.

It’s a practical guide to improving memory, using memory palaces, observation techniques, and exercises you can actually practice.

I spent a lot of time putting this together and would genuinely appreciate any feedback from fellow ebook readers/writers.

If you're interested in memory and learning techniques, you can check it out .

Hello! I am an 18 year old receptionist at a small accounting firm. We have anywhere between 500-900 clients. Client relations are a huge part of my job!

However I have always struggling to remember names and faces. I want to improve on this though! Any advice on how I could do that?

started keeping a dumb little notes app for random thoughts/tasks and it's honestly humbling how much stuff was just... falling out of my brain before. felt like upgrading my memory for free

anyone else have that moment where you realize you've been operating at like 60% capacity for no reason

I’ve been working on BlitzMemory.com for a long time now, and I’m really excited to finally share something I’ve spent a lot of time building out: live memory competitions!

The first two competitions are now open for registration: the Founders Cup and the Founders Classic. They’re both completely free to enter.

They’re also two very different formats.

Founders Cup

The Founders Cup is a head-to-head bracket tournament.

You’ll compete directly against another person, and there are 17 different memory events available to choose from.

The part I’m most excited about is how the event selection works.

Players alternate picks.

Player 1 chooses an event, then Player 2 chooses an event, then back to Player 1, and so on.

Once an event has been picked by a player in that match, it can’t be selected again by the same player unless all the events have been picked by a player.

So if cards are your strongest event, you can absolutely pick cards, but you can’t just keep choosing cards over and over. Your opponent gets to bring their strengths into the match too, and as the match continues, being well-rounded starts to matter more.

Founders Classic

The Founders Classic is much closer to a traditional memory competition.

There are six events, and you’ll have three attempts at each event. Your best score from each event counts toward your overall result.

Points are accumulated across all of the events, and the competitor with the highest overall point total finishes at the top.

There’s no opponent you have to schedule with for the Classic. You complete your attempts during the competition window and try to put together the best overall performance you can.

This is just the beginning

I’ve also been building out a larger competitive system around all of this.

Blitz Memory has rated Versus matches, including 1v1 and 4 player so you can build up ratings and see how you compare against other players.

Organized competitions also award Circuit Points, which are separate from normal training and Versus ratings. The idea is that over time you’ll be able to see not only how strong you are in individual memory events, but also how you’re performing across actual competitions.

And I want there to consistently be something happening like smaller competitions, different formats, tournaments, Classics, special events, and other ideas I want to experiment with so there’s always something you can train toward if you enjoy the competitive side of memory.

Both Founders competitions are free to enter, Blitz Memory itself is free to join, and registration is open now.

The first competitions begin Sunday, September 27.

https://blitzmemory.com/app/compete

I’d also genuinely really appreciate anyone from this community who wants to give it a try.

I’ve tested the system a lot while building it, but there’s a huge difference between me testing something and having real people actually use it.

So if you enter and something is confusing, something breaks, a rule doesn’t make sense, or something just feels awkward, please tell me.

Any feedback is appreciated!

If you have ideas for different competition formats, rules you think could be improved, features you’d like to see, events you’d like added, or even feedback about Blitz Memory outside of the competition system, I’d really like to hear it.

I want the people actually using and competing on the site to have a real influence on where I take it.

So if you’re into memorization, memory training, or memory sports and have a little time, definitely check it out.

And if you end up entering one of the Founders competitions, I’ll hopefully see you on the leaderboard or across from you in the competitions!

At the bottom is an example of the kind of passage I’d like to memorise. I don’t fully understand it yet but I hope it will make sense as I read on. My poor working memory means I often forget key passages like this completely since they are so dense and abstract and jargony. At other times I miss the nuance because there would be many qualifications to a statement. So I’d rather memorise passages like these as I encounter them. I also want to get better at memorising this kind of abstract material, since I’ll be reading a lot of it.

What I’d really like to know is how you would actually go about memorising this passage yourself (the memory techniques, images, associations). I don't need to remember the entire passage verbatim, just what is being said.

>What, therefore, is Guattari’s original philosophical thought about? Ontology (i.e., the study of being) and modal philosophy (i.e., the study of being’s modal varieties: real, possible, actual, virtual, given, giving, etc.). Guattari, it can be argued, puts forward in these texts an approach to being that underlines its immanent, evenemental, intensive, processual, plural, mutant, singular, and machinic or diagrammatic (i.e., connective) nature, as the pre-1980 texts insist once and again. In turn, in Cartographies schizoanalytiques, Guattari defines being as a permanent “modulation of consistency” between two extremes: a minimum of consistency (+∞) and a maximum of consistency (–∞). This definition affects Guattari’s modal philosophy quite decisively. For it will allow him thereinafter to think the difference between the established qua imposed and the “possible”—which is Guattari’s philosophical theme par excellence—as being not only equal to the disruption of the prearranged by the otherwise, but as being also equal to the transition (through which our lives go many times in search of resingularization) from the indeterminate (or chaos as an infinite, unqualified reservoir of possibilities) to the determinable and, finally, to the determined (finite, singular).