I kind of had the opposite experience. It seemed like I could figure things out quickly, but not especially remember them. Memory definitely helps, and as I got

I kind of had the opposite experience. It seemed like I could figure things out quickly, but not especially remember them. Memory definitely helps, and as I got older and my brain doesn't seem to work at the same clock speed, memory helps a lot more and seems easier than figuring things out again all of the time. So, I kind of thought of it like a computer. You can sometimes have a look-up table of pre-computed things, but if you had more processor than memory, you'd go the other direction and re-compute instead of using memory/storage.