My daughter just learned how to ride a bike. It took us two sessions, spaced out by roughly two weeks. The first session was about an hour and a half and progress was minimal. She made some improvement, but was nowhere close to riding a bike on her own.

Fast forward two weeks and she is a “bike rider” now. The second session, maybe a half hour total. The first few attempts it looked like we were starting right where we left off, but it then clicked for her and each successive attempt substantial progress was made.

I wasn’t necessarily surprised by this progress, but was still pleased. Anecdotally I have experienced similar progress and I am sure you have as well. Think about the idea of sleeping on it, where you can’t figure something out after spending hours on it, you decide to give it a rest and come back the next day and the solution is plain as day. I recently read Range by David Epstein and there is a section about this in the chapter on education. Basically, if students are given exposure to something but not forced to memorize the long term retention of that information is much higher.

The point being, we need to put ourselves in uncomfortable situations if we want to progress. It is in those uncomfortable situations where we may not know the answer or how to do something that we are inputting information into our brain. Once in the brain, it may take some time for the brain to process, but it will, and next time it will be easier. It was not fun for my daughter to fall time after time as she learned to ride her bike, but it was worth it.