I've realized over the last year that I've had a significant decline in mental sharpness compared to my highschool/university days.
My job provides me with ample challenging problems to solve, but often these problems are in similar domains and solvable using what I want to intuitively call "linear problem solving". (I've not looked this up yet, there's likely a proper term for it.)
As an example, imagine knowing numbers and learning for the first time how to add 1+1 and 1+2. Thinking linearly, you could expand that to
figure out chains of addition, the commutative properties of addition, adding large numbers, etc.
What I feel I've lost is the ability to go beyond linear thinking and understanding the rules and implications of addition enough to
intuitively make the leap to subtraction or multiplication.
This was a power I definitely had in undergrad when I was frequently learning and working with mathematical concepts. I was by no means a mathematical genius (or even terribly proficient at my studies) but there were frequent "aha" moments where concepts would just "click" and the bigger picture would reveal itself.
Now, even when I try to pick up mathematical (or other highly technical) concepts my brain just doesn't spin up fast enough to keep up.
The best way I can think to describe it is switching gears on a bike -- I know what second gear feels like, but when I try to shift up the chain just won't catch and simply rattles around stuck in first gear.
As I'm moving through the previously mentioned 10-minute physics tutorials this lack of a second gear has been very noticeable. The content in each video is simple enough, but the logical leaps between videos evade me. After each video I try (and fail) to complete the next video's goal without the next tutorial. I can easily extend the lessons in each video within the framework that video provides, but fail to escape the bounds of basic understanding until I watch the next tutorial and slap my forehead at how obvious the next step I missed was.
A specific case was trying to move from "ball on a hoop (05)" to "triple pendulum (06)". After learning the ball on a hoop constraint "hack"
the tutorials implement, I simply tried building a pendulum by coding 3 balls constricted to hoops, with each hoop being centered
around the previous ball. Linear thinking.
The actual way to extend the concepts was to change the constraint method from "constrain ball to hoop" to "constrain length of string" which properly
accounts for velocities of sub-pendulums acting on parents, which my solution stupidly did not cover.
What's worse is when the author gets into equations. These aren't terribly hard equations, this is stuff I know how to do, yet my eyes glaze over as soon as they land on anything typeset in LaTeX and it all stays undigested.
As I very much want to make games and shaders and digital art, I believe it is imperative that I regain my ability to "shift up", fully understand concepts, and solve problems non-linearly once again. I just need to solve the problem of "how"...