There's no replacement for practice. I wrestle with the same problem; what's helped me is finding things to work on I'm interested in. Say I want to brush up

There's no replacement for practice. I wrestle with the same problem; what's helped me is finding things to work on I'm interested in. Say I want to brush up on C again. I'm not going to go reading books about it. 80% of it's going to be going over conventions I'm already familiar with. Instead, I'll think about something I want to write with it... then dive in. Referring to manuals where necessary. This being something I want in the end helps me push through the uncertainty, and not living in the documentation tests my memory while keeping my eyes from glazing over Eventually it's less of a conscious effort to do things. The idea spawns the 'how' effortlessly Keep in mind I burned myself out on programming/development. It's important to know when to sit it down and come back, too. The closest I get anymore is DevOps, writing pseudocode in a higher level language that does the grunt work for me