Driving to a new place usually takes more time than driving back. So many new impressions and your mind has a lot to work with. Repeating the same route will initially bring confirmations “I’ve seen this before”, and eventually you’ll get bored bored bored. To the point where you don’t remember anything of the entire trip anymore.
Our perception of time is not very linear.
With the car or vehicle in motion and in traffic, it’s not easy to stop, take in a view, or trying to memorize street names, but that’s fine: the goal of travelling is to get to your destination.
I’ve been thinking that learning a new skill, or understanding a new topic in your school books can be somewhat the same. I think that just completing the route the first time, even if you don’t understand everything that’s been said, should perhaps have much more focus the first time. Just skip over the things you don’t understand rightaway, and read through the paragraphs on the first go.
Then repeat the session and you’ll start to recognize parts, connect more, and it’ll go faster.
The new topic you’re reading about can be like a mountain. When you’re in front of it you can only take in one side of it. There’s no telling how long it will take to walk around it (you can’t see the back). And you’ll only know you’ve walked around it when you start recognizing parts you’ve seen before.
The new topic can be huge or small, but you need to walk around it once before you have a feeling of how much effort it will take to take it all in.
Your brain is good at categorizing and recognizing. Keep feeding it and it will sort out stuff for you, and that, I think, should help with your understanding.