My Story: How MemBox Came to Be

How a kid who thought he was dumb found a review system that actually worked, filled a plastic Memory Box with cards, and eventually turned it into an iPhone app.

Growing up thinking I was dumb

For most of my life, I honestly thought I was dumb.

School felt like something I was trapped inside, not something I fit into. I was the kid who “felt sick” in the morning, stared at the clock, skipped too much, and kept falling behind. Looking back, ADHD and anxiety were probably a big part of it. At the time it just felt like I couldn’t do school the way other people could.

There were clues that I could learn when something finally clicked. I memorized “The Cremation of Sam McGee” for a teacher. I could lock in when there was a challenge in front of me. The problem wasn’t ability. The problem was that I had no system.

The accident and the mission

After a serious motorcycle accident, I decided that if I had one last breath, I would use it to serve Him. That decision led me to a mission in Thailand.

Before I left, I started building crude study systems — marking scriptures, tabbing pages, trying to connect verses to missionary lessons. It helped, but it still wasn’t enough. Around that time I also picked up ideas from memory books like Mega Memory and learned the value of chunking, repetition, and working in smaller pieces instead of trying to force whole blocks into my head at once.

Discovering the review system

On my mission, I heard the same thing a lot of missionaries hear: memorize a scripture every day and you’ll come home with a photographic memory. So for about a year, I did exactly that.

But I had a big problem: I was memorizing without a real review system. I would learn something, move on, and slowly lose it. A lot of effort went in. Not enough stayed.

The turning point came when I trained a new elder who had something I didn’t: a review system printed right on his cards. It was an eight-stage pattern that told you when to review, how often, and how the spacing increased over time. I didn’t invent it. I received it, recognized how powerful it was, and made it my own.

I had a custom stamp made with that eight-stage pattern so I could stamp regular cards, write the content on them, and plug every new card into the same schedule. Then I started over properly.

The literal Memory Box

I re-memorized the scriptures from my first year — this time in English and Thai — and actually followed the system. I was reviewing 50 to 60 cards a day, every day, often about an hour in the morning and half an hour at night.

By the time I came home, I had thousands of scriptures and principles memorized in both languages. My cousin Greg asked, “Did you do it?” My mom tested me by pulling random cards. I could recite them word-for-word. It was real.

Did I end up with some Hollywood-style photographic memory? No. What I got was more useful: if I put something into the system and stayed with the schedule, I could keep it. That was enough.

Realizing the problem was process

Once I had the system, I used it to rebuild my academics: math, physics, biology, chemistry. The grades changed completely — A’s, A+’s, 98s, 99s, 100s. That flipped a lifelong story in my head.

I wasn’t dumb. I just hadn’t known how to get things into short-term memory properly, and I hadn’t known how to review them at the right times so they would move into long-term memory and stay there.

The problem was never my intelligence. It was my process.

Why the paper version kept failing

The review system worked beautifully. The physical workflow did not.

The cards lived in a plastic box in my room. If I wasn’t home, I wasn’t reviewing. I had to write or print every card, stamp the review system, sort the cards, move them between stages, and keep the whole physical machine alive. I even experimented with printing systems that could automate parts of it.

But the pattern was always the same: I’d build momentum, then burn out on the logistics. The method worked. The overhead kept killing it.

From plastic box to pocket app

I called that original box my Memory Box because that’s exactly what it was: a box filled with memories I had chosen to keep. That’s where the name MemBox comes from.

When the iPhone came out, I remember thinking how amazing it would be to have my Memory Box in app form. But I had zero software background. I asked people to build it for me. The quotes were way out of reach. So the idea stayed alive in the background for years.

Building MemBox with no software background

Much later, I got introduced to ChatGPT and eventually asked a simple question: could it help me build my Memory Box as an app?

That did not turn into some effortless fairy tale. I had to learn everything from scratch — Xcode, project files, errors, build problems, UI issues, broken instructions, changed APIs, all of it. A lot of it was frustrating. A lot of it was slow. What kept it moving was stubbornness, prayer, and doing the next small piece.

Night after night I would think about the next problem. The next day I would open Xcode and try to build that one piece. Then the next. Then the next. Tiny patch by tiny patch.

First I built it for myself

At first, my goal was not to build an app for the world. I just wanted my Memory Box in digital form so I could finally use this review system in a way that fit my life and my brain.

When it finally came together and I had a functional version of MemBox on my phone, it felt like I had given birth to a digital version of something I had carried in my head for about twenty years. I used it for myself first. I refined it for months. I shaped it around the way I actually live.

Why I decided to share it

Only later did I feel a real desire to bring it to other people.

I had tested a lot of flashcard and spaced-repetition apps, and while some were good, none of them really matched this combination: everyday practicality, an opinionated review system, and a real focus on permanence instead of just tomorrow’s test.

Most systems are optimized around short-term performance. MemBox is built around a different idea: you keep what you come back to. The right card, on the right day, enough times for your brain to finally say: this matters.

What I use MemBox for now

These days I use MemBox for scriptures, poems, Thai, mental health supports, parenting ideas, and random facts I actually want to keep — things like dates, details, and even tire sizes.

The review system at the heart of MemBox is not mine in the sense that I invented it from nothing. It was handed to me on my mission and I have refined it over the years. What I built is the digital Memory Box around it — the version that finally makes the system practical and sustainable for my real life.

Why this matters to me

I have lived through serious mental health struggles, and for a long time I felt broken and dumb because things didn’t seem to stick no matter how hard I tried. MemBox taught me something better: I was never incapable of learning. I just needed a review process that actually worked.

This app is one of the biggest accomplishments of my life. It started as a literal box of cards in my room. Now it is an app in your pocket, built around a review system that tells your brain, “This matters. Let’s keep it.”