The example in the beginning is a perfect retelling of my interaction with transformers too :D
However, a word of caution: sometimes the efficient thing is actually to skim and move on. If you spend the effort to actually understand a topic which is difficult but limited in scope, but then you don’t interact with it for a year or two, what you remember is just the high-level verbal summary (the same as if you stopped at the first step).
For example, I have understood and forgotten MOSFET transistors at least three times in my life, and each time it was more or less the same effort. If I had to explain them now, I would retreat to a single shallow-level sentence.
The example in the beginning is a perfect retelling of my interaction with transformers too :D
However, a word of caution: sometimes the efficient thing is actually to skim and move on. If you spend the effort to actually understand a topic which is difficult but limited in scope, but then you don’t interact with it for a year or two, what you remember is just the high-level verbal summary (the same as if you stopped at the first step). For example, I have understood and forgotten MOSFET transistors at least three times in my life, and each time it was more or less the same effort. If I had to explain them now, I would retreat to a single shallow-level sentence.