I forgot entire courses.
So I had to find what actually works.

/My memory is rubbish. That's the honest start.

Most people who teach study techniques were good at studying. They found it easy, got the grades, and now they're telling you how they did it. That's not me.

I have genuine memory issues. Things don't stick. I'd sit through a course, finish it, feel like I'd learned something — and a week later it was gone. Not "a bit hazy." Gone. I took course after course in IT, digital marketing, and other things I genuinely cared about, and watched the knowledge evaporate almost as fast as I took it in.

For a long time I assumed that was just me. That I wasn't built for learning. If you've ever felt that, I want to be the first to tell you: it's almost never true. The problem usually isn't you. It's the method.

/I tried everything. Most of it didn't work.

I went deep into memory techniques and "learning how to learn" material. Memory palaces. Speed reading. Highlighters in five colours. Re-reading my notes until my eyes glazed over. Mind maps. Apps that promised to fix everything.

Some of it helped a little. Most of it didn't. I was putting in hours and getting almost nothing back, and I couldn't work out why. I was doing what everyone told me to do — and still forgetting everything.

The truth I worked out much later: nearly all of those techniques are passive. They feel productive. They feel like studying. But they don't force your brain to do the one thing that actually builds memory — retrieve information, not just review it.

/Then I found Fail First. Everything changed.

The turning point was discovering what I now call the Fail First method — taking the test before you've studied. Getting things wrong on purpose. Letting the gaps show you exactly what to work on.

It sounded backwards. It felt uncomfortable. But for the first time, things started to stick. Not because my memory had magically improved — it hadn't — but because I'd finally found a way of studying that worked with a difficult memory instead of against it.

From there it grew. Active recall. Spaced repetition. Anki. The Feynman technique. Each one earned its place because it actually moved the needle for someone whose brain doesn't make learning easy. I stacked the ones that worked together into a single system. That's The Stack.

/Why I'm sharing all of it

Here's what gets me: schools teach you subjects. They almost never teach you how to learn. You're expected to absorb history, maths, and science without anyone ever showing you how memory actually works or which study methods are backed by evidence and which are a waste of your evening.

That's a massive gap. And it's not just kids in school — it's adults doing certifications, people changing careers, late learners coming back to study after years away. Everyone's been left to figure it out alone.

So I'm putting everything I found in one place. Not one magic trick — a toolkit. Different methods for different types of learners and different situations, so you can find what works for your brain and apply it to your own studies. The goal is simple: help you get the grades and results you actually deserve, without wasting years doing it the hard way like I did.

/A bit about me

I'm based in the UK. My background is in IT, mental wellbeing, and digital marketing, and I'm a lifelong learner — which is a polite way of saying I never stop taking on new things, even though my memory makes me work twice as hard for them. I'm especially interested in AI and where it's taking how we learn.

I'm not a professor. I don't have letters after my name in cognitive science. What I have is years of trial and error as someone who genuinely struggles to retain information — and a system that finally worked. The methods here don't rest on my authority. They rest on the evidence behind them and the fact that they work, even for a memory like mine.