The most superior form of training:

An easy trick to improve your retention while working through a bank of review or challenge problems like LeetCode, HackerRank, etc: Go through the question bank breadth-first, not depth-first.

Treat your study sessions like physical workouts at the gym, not like watching sports on TV.

At the end of the day, learning is memory. Understanding amounts to memory that is well-connected and deeply ingrained. If someone is "just memorizing" as opposed to "truly understanding," it really means they haven't stored enough information in memory. This is more than just semantics. If you don't realize that learning is memory, then you won't realize that the most effective way to learn is to use memory-supporting training techniques. It's easy to get confused, thinking: "Truly understanding something is different from just memorizing it, so learning doesn't require memory-focused techniques like active retrieval practice and spaced review. Those are about memorization, not true understanding." And if that's what you think, then you'll likely shirk the hard work required to build memory, use fun/easy but ineffective training techniques instead, and end up not actually learning much.

Track effort daily. Track consistency weekly. Track progress monthly. Track transformation yearly.