I'm late to answer respond on this one too. Just happened to scroll back through my comments.

First and foremost, being really present, lucid for new experiences, or as an observer to others new experiences, captures a lot of information in the moment that has high value.

Taking a while after something like that to think through it internalized it, what rules may apply, what dynamics were present, and details and importance is a very good exercise. What this does is kind of solidify and amplify the memory of the experience.

Secondly, a great many things are connected. As we have time, making those connections can yield perspective and commonality that can save us a lot of time in the future by recognizing when those things are in play. And what I mean by that is you may actually have a skill or an understanding that that's workable already known to you, but you don't know it because you have never matched up the task at hand with the full set of tools you possess.

This is going to seem like a silly example, but when I was working in the shop, I found a lot of similarities between how I staged the material I was handling, optimize the process I was executing, and programs how data moves, what's efficient what's not, that sort of thing.

Once I had that realization, I broke every production record in the building regularly, with very little negative impact, and a lot of positive impact.

I spent a lot of time in manufacturing, as and being a prototype mechanic, making things directly with my hands and the tools. I also spent a fair amount of time upfront engineering, putting in systems for automation, doing layout design reviews and that sort of thing.

I worked with a lot of people, from older workers who'd been doing this their whole lives to young people just getting started.

Take production. More fit, younger people do well, given they have discipline.

Now, protos, or improving production works very differently. Sometimes the goal is to make one or two of something hard.

Here, the people who have had experiences, who know how to think, who can qualify and quantify risks, who have an internal sense of the dynamics, scale, etc... who can feel its good, rock!

Normally it takes many years to perform that role. I was the youngest by a couple decades. And I performed well.

And that all happened because I understood the phrase you asked me more about.

Working with those guys, who learned their craft in all analog means, no computers was amazing!

Wisdom is to how we think and how productive those thoughts are like tools are to labor.

Here is the secret:

You watch with eyes and mind wide open. Try to remember that state when you were a little kid, no preconceptions and excitement, openness to a new thing and just be ultra lucid, present.

Then, afterword, think about it, connect things together, and then share with others to firm it up, get clarity and filter out noise, error.

Many people become good at repeating what they have seen or done. Does not matter physical, virtual, whatever. It is monkey see, monkey do.

And that's great! It is a skill I value highly, makes me a great technician.

But, the second order on all that is to know why, be able to derive that from basics and compare to other "whys" already known.

The third order comes with time, and that is perspective, scale, expectations, being able to plan well in advance, and execute with confidence, despite large portions of the task at hand being novel.

Truth is far less is truly novel, and we do not realize and benefit from that because we do not take the time to really see what our experiences, or those shared with us mean.