I know it's a weird question, but I'm curious to understand what goes through people's mind when learning something. Do you imagine diagrams? Repeat what you read to yourself? Picture and explanation for someone else?

I'm curious as to if there is a "proper", or rather, a more effective way to go about when it comes to thinking while you're studying.

This question is here because I haven't studied my whole life and started roughly 2 months ago and have been having trouble to keep all the concepts in my head. I have heard about many different techniques (Recalling, revisions and even Feynman's) but I'm not sure how to apply them, as weird as that might sound.

So I'm sort of trying to understand what's the root of my problem; As if maybe my years of school, memorizing everything, somehow conditioned me into thinking in a "wrong" way if that makes sense. And then, I wanna try fixing it so I can start learning properly and getting smarter.