The Expert Mind

This article by Philip E. Ross was quite interesting to me. It took a lot of concepts that I understood somewhat, and combined them together, as well as fill in the gaps of my understanding. Chess is never a game that I enjoyed very much, but I never took the time to figure out the strategies and maneuvers that lead to good playing. I thought It was a lack of understanding the gameplay on my part. It turns out, according to the article, that my problems were two fold. 1- I did not have enough experience, and 2- my way of approaching the problem could use some work.
Philip Ross talks about the amount of time taken to measure any given task, with 10 years being an approximate amount of time to master something. In this regard, mental ability is simply not a matter of talent (or something that could not be learned), but a matter of time spent working to solve the problem. He also talks a little bit about why this (mental ability) is not the same as a sport or learning a musical instrument (physical ability). Although many of the factors apply, needing ample time to study the craft, working hands on with something, etc ..., there are certain body types/physical abilities that make mastering a sport of physical skill easier. To cover these types of factors, I would suggest reading the book Outliers by Malcom Gladwell, as it covers all sorts of extenuating circumstances in success in various fields of study.
One of the techniques Mr. Ross covered was the chunking theory. This is basically how people organize complex ideas/thoughts/techniques into a single notion that is easier to remember. Your brain can remember about 5-9 single thoughts in a sequence, which gets put into a cluster that you will remember. The example used in his article is Mary had a little lamb. The words are very basic, and each sentence forms its own cluster. In our minds, we can piece these clusters together to form a song, because rather than remember each word individually, you remember lines of the song that flow together. If asked to say the third or forth word of that nursery rhyme, you have to think about it. If you were asked to recite the rhymes first line, you could probably do this with no problem.
Both of these ideas are incredibly useful, and I understand how this applies to the web. Many times you deal with code that is repetitive, but just different enough that it takes some time to get used to. A good idea is to remember chunks of code, rather than each individual word and command. This should help your brain to understand it better, and you should be able to make your life a little easier.