[pfkurtz]

Learning is as much forgetting as remembering.

When I study something, I go for awhile, but eventually it becomes difficult, confusing, hard to see the forest for the trees. Particularly with technical information and skills like programming (or natural) languages.

When I come back a little bit later, I find that I only remember the things that made sense; my confusions are forgotten, and there is fresh mental space and energy to master a bit more of the terrain before I need another break.

[agumonkey]

I'm still staggered how potent a post effort pause can get. I can spend hours and days trying to improve something and not being able to see the easiest spots. I come back 4 days later and everything just jumps out as obvious as day. No confusion, no fatigue, lots of ideas, enthusiasm, creativity..

[p-christ]

Our subconcious mind often works on our problems while we aren't thinking about them, i that's more what's going on here than forgetting. your brain figured it out for you while you were doing something else

[pfkurtz]

That's sometimes true but I think my point still stands.

When I'm studying a foreign language, I learn some words and they stick, but I'm exposed to a bunch more that I don't remember next time. I forget those meanings, but the ones that stuck are now vivid and with me, brighter.

When I'm studying Kubernetes, I end up reading a ton of information that's irrelevant to the task at hand, and lots of it doesn't make that much sense because I'm new to it. The next day, when I come back, the things that I actually understood remain, ready to be the foundation for new learning, which they couldn't have been when they were mere data points in an overwhelmed brain. I don't remember the parts I was confused about yesterday, just this stuff that now makes sense.

[pfkurtz]

To unite our points, I might be thinking of something like: the immensity of sensory and cognitive data that pass through (sub)consciousness during the learning task are sifted and sorted in the unconscious while not learning; one might call the sifting "forgetting" and the sorting "figuring out".