I was playing BeatMania and suddenly an idea came to me. I made an analogy between physical exercise and mental exercise. When you work out to gain muscle, you lift weights until you burn out and your body gets sore. After you're done, you rest until the pain is gone, letting your cells do the work of healing and expanding the muscle tissue. The pain here is an indicator suggesting that you stop training. Well, the same is perhaps true for the learning process. You gather information until you become so frustrated that you want to pound your head into the table. That's a sign from the subconsciousness that it has gathered the optimal amount of information and now it's time to assess it. Time for some rest. You will have learned more than you ever expected. As long as you have a basic understanding of what you had been studying, your subconsciousness will do the work of connecting the dots and associating the new information with the old one. In fact, to think of it now, that's how I learned PHP. I remember I rent a book from the local library and I read everything in one week. I didn't even practice that much, I just gave the whole book a quick glance. Weeks later did I start putting the theory into practice and I was surprised by the things I remembered. I didn't even know I knew that, it just came into me intuitively.
Again, this is just a theory. I think it's valid, though. Have you ever tried really hard doing something? Hours of frustration without any success. You thought you'd never be able to learn how to do it right and you stopped trying. But then, a week later, you gave it a second chance, and you turned out a lot better than the first time. That's what I'm talking about. Frustration is a bliss.
