The Process of Building Intuition Can Itself Be Counter-Intuitive

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Intuition feels sort of hand-wavy, broad strokes, big-picture-like.

But the way you actually build intuition is by drilling down and micro-analyzing numerous concrete examples to the fullest extent.

Intuition doesn’t feel like intuition when you’re building it.

And if you only engage in study practices that make you feel that hand-wavy, broad strokes, big-picture-like intuition, then you won’t actually learn much.

Don’t let the expected feeling of intuition keep you from actually building it.

Don’t be the student who says “I know the concepts but I just can’t do the problems” – there’s no such thing; you don’t actually know it, you just feel like you do.

You want intuition? Then get your hands dirty and do the reps.

You don’t get intuition until you’ve been in the trenches. That’s where the intuition is. That’s where you earn it, that’s where you find it.

If you don’t wanna rough it in the trenches, then sorry, no intuition for you.

“But, but… can’t you just give me the intuition?”

No. Intuition comes through repetition. That’s how you get the automaticity, the natural feel, and that’s what intuition is.

When people want their learning to be less skill-heavy and more concept-oriented, what they’re often really saying is that they want a fast overview of a subject without going into the details, without really getting reps on everything.

A video that explains all of calculus in an hour, or how neural networks work in 20 minutes.

Just enough that you can tell your friend something cool and you think you have opinions about it.

But that’s not true mastery. That’s surface-level, shallow.

If you want to actually master something, you have to approach it like a professional musician plays their instrument, or a professional athlete plays their sport.

You have to get the reps.

I know that sounds harsh, but it’s just reality. It’s a phenomenon pops up all the time in the research literature on the science of learning:

When using effective learning strategies, students perform better on assessments but may feel they’ve learned less.

Why?

Because effective strategies increase cognitive activation, enhancing learning despite students feeling it’s harder.

It’s like weightlifting: the strongest people lift weights heavy enough to make them feel weak.

That’s just how it is.

You can either

A) suck it up and do the work to build understanding

or

B) waste time looking for a quick fix that doesn’t exist, and then claim that “I understand it but just can’t solve the problems,” because you can’t accept that all that time you spent looking for a quick fix was literally just wasted, burned to ashes, with nothing to show for it.

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