Two problems stand between a great idea and you actually keeping it: finding the idea worth your time, and not forgetting it. Here's how Sticky Idea handles both.
We start from ideas that have already earned their place — the ones widely-respected books and thinkers keep returning to. Each candidate has to clear a simple bar: it's genuinely useful in everyday life, it can be attributed to a named source, and it's distinct from what's already here. We'd rather have fewer ideas that change how you think than a long list of forgettable ones.
Every lesson teaches exactly one idea. It opens with a concrete example, states the idea plainly, explains why it matters, and ends with a recall prompt and answer so you can test yourself. We work hard to stay faithful to the source — a lesson is a doorway to a great book, never a substitute for reading it — and the source author and title are always shown.
Memory follows a predictable forgetting curve: learn something once and it fades within days. The fix, discovered by Hermann Ebbinghaus over a century ago, is spacing — reviewing material at widening intervals interrupts the forgetting and makes each memory more durable than the last.
Sticky Idea schedules those reviews with FSRS (the Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler), a modern, open algorithm. After each review you rate how well you remembered, and FSRS estimates the moment your recall would drop too low and brings the idea back right then — not too early to waste your time, not too late to lose it. Combined with active recall (retrieving the answer yourself, rather than re-reading it), it's the most reliable way known to turn something you read into something you know.
Every idea names its book and author, and carries a "last reviewed" date. Lessons are drafted with the help of AI tools, then curated, fact-checked, and edited by a human before they go live — we aim for accuracy over volume and fix mistakes when we find them. If you spot one, tell us at [email protected].
A five-minute lesson can capture an idea's core, but not a whole book's nuance, evidence, and counter-arguments. Treat Sticky Idea as a memorable starting point and a prompt to go deeper — the best ideas reward reading the original.