The habit was never the problem — retention was

You opened the app every day for eight months. Then one day you tried to read a French menu on holiday and understood almost nothing. What happened?

Nothing went wrong with your discipline. The daily habit did exactly what habits do — it got you to show up. But showing up and remembering are two different problems, and most apps only solve the first one.

Forgetting is the default

Left alone, a new word fades from memory within days. This isn't a personal failing — it's how human memory works for everyone. The fix isn't "practice harder." It's revisiting the word at the moment you're about to forget it, then again a bit later, then again further out, until it sticks for good.

That timing matters more than raw repetition. Reviewing a word you already know cold wastes a minute you could have spent on something you're actually about to lose. Reviewing something too late means relearning it from nothing.

What actually changes the outcome

• Words come back right before you'd forget them, not on a fixed daily grind
• New material and older material are mixed, so nothing sits untouched for months
• The platform tracks timing so you don't have to think about what to revisit

None of this requires more willpower than you already have. It requires the system around your habit to remember on your behalf, instead of asking you to remember that it should remember.

If you've done the daily thing and still feel like you're starting over, the habit wasn't the problem. The system underneath it was.