How to improve your general knowledge

By the edgi team Updated November 4, 2026

The best way to improve your general knowledge is to learn one idea at a time, next to something you already know, and edgi is built for exactly that: a free iPhone app of short interactive Lessons where every idea you finish becomes a card on a Map of what you know. Reading more won't fix it on its own, because a new fact sticks when there's something already in your head for it to hang on.

We make edgi, and we built it so that what you learn attaches to something.

Why general knowledge doesn't stick

Many of the top results for this question say read the newspaper, take quizzes and keep a short daily habit. Few say why last month's facts are already gone.

In 1988, Recht and Leslie sorted 64 junior high students two ways: good or poor readers, and people who knew a lot about baseball or very little. Each read an account of half an inning of a game, then showed what they remembered by moving figures on a model field and by retelling it. What a student already knew about baseball had a significant effect on every measure, and good readers and poor readers showed it alike.

What you already know decides how much you can take in. A hundred facts with nothing under them are leaves with no trunk or branches to stick to, so they all fall to the ground.

Try it before you read on

This Lesson takes a couple of minutes. Nine letters flash and you type them back, then the same nine come again in a different order.

Working Memory Working memory is the cognitive system that holds and manipulates information temporarily so you can reason and make decisions.

60-second Lesson

Working Memory

Working memory holds only a few things at once. What you already know decides how much one thing can hold.

Play it here Read about working memory

Compare your two scores. The second round was FBI, SUV and DNA: three things you already knew, holding three letters each. Psychologists call those chunks. Miller put the span of what we can hold at once at about seven items in 1956; Cowan put it nearer four chunks in 2001, once rehearsal and grouping are blocked. Either way the slots are few, and what fits in each one depends on what you know.

The best demonstration is a runner Ericsson, Chase and Faloon studied in 1980. Over more than 230 hours of practice his digit span went from 7 to 79, because he coded strings of digits as running times. Letters, which had no running times to lean on, didn't get the same boost. He didn't grow a bigger memory. He grew more to hang things on, and that's the whole game with general knowledge.

What to actually do

1. Start from a question you already have. You hear "refraction" in a video, want to know what it is, and the spark dies somewhere between pausing the video and typing a search. Catch it while you still care.
2. Answer before you look it up. In a 2006 study, Roediger and Karpicke had students either reread a passage or take a test on it. Five minutes later the rereaders remembered more; two days and a week later, the tested students did. Rereading made students more confident they would remember, even though they remembered less, which is why it feels like it works. An edgi Lesson has you predict, tap and test as you go, and it ends with a card. The testing effect Lesson runs their experiment on you.
3. Take the next question right away. One fact is a leaf; facts that touch make a branch. When you finish a Lesson, edgi asks "Where to next?" with a few ideas connected to the one you just learned, so the next question is one tap away instead of a new search.
4. Meet it again in the wild, not on a reread. edgi's Review is a game over cards you already own: you hold three of them, a moment from real life appears (a text, a sign, a headline) and you play the card that names it.
5. If edgi doesn't have it, make it. You can ask edgi for a Lesson, Quiz or Explainer on a topic you type, so the reference you missed today can be tonight's Lesson.

See where it landed

Most plans for general knowledge end in a notebook. A notebook can't show you what you know.

On edgi, every Lesson you finish becomes a card, and the card lights up on your Map next to the ideas it connects to. The Map has more than 104,000 ideas and 296,000 connections between them, and 36% of those connections cross from one field to another (as of September 2026). Any two ideas are typically about seven steps apart. That's the shape of general knowledge, fields running into each other, and a month in you can see which corners of the Map you've lit up.

If you want an app for it

edgi does every step above in one place, free. If you'd rather build the routine from separate tools, Sporcle's "more than two million quizzes" are a quick way to answer before you look, and the Wikipedia app ("60+ million articles in nearly 300 languages") is where to read the whole story once you're curious. Kinnu has "General Knowledge" in its App Store name and is free to download. Sapio teaches history across "9 great eras of humanity, from the Big Bang to today" in five minutes a day, at $6.99 a month or $34.99 a year on the App Store (November 2026).

The full comparison, with prices, is on our list of the best general knowledge apps.

Pick something else only if…

• You're studying for the general knowledge section of a specific exam: get that exam's prep book.
• You want history in order, era by era: Sapio.
• You want math practice: Brilliant.
• You need Android. edgi's Lessons play in a browser at edgi.tv/learn.

FAQ

How can I improve my general knowledge? Learn one idea at a time next to something you already know, and answer before you look it up. edgi is built for that: every idea you finish becomes a card on a Map that shows what it connects to.

How do I learn general knowledge as an adult? Start from the gaps you actually notice, like a reference you didn't get or a country you couldn't place, and learn what sits next to them. In Recht and Leslie's 1988 study, what students already knew about baseball had a significant effect on how much of a baseball story they remembered, whether they were good readers or poor ones.

Is there an app for common knowledge? Yes. edgi is a free iPhone app of short interactive Lessons, and every idea you finish lands on a Map of more than 104,000 ideas. Kinnu is a general knowledge course app, free to download.

How do I stop forgetting what I learn? Test yourself instead of rereading. In Roediger and Karpicke's 2006 study, students who took a test remembered more a week later than students who reread. An edgi Lesson makes you answer as you go.

Is edgi free? Yes. edgi is free: Lessons, cards, Sets and the Map.

Is edgi on Android? Not as an app. edgi runs on iPhone, and its Lessons play in a browser at edgi.tv/learn with no account.