Then try a fun game: explain it to someone else, preferably outside of the problem domain. The premise you're capturing is great, because society benefits from your hard-won battle to distill that information into something that can be passed along to "future generations"

That's why I have the greatest respect for high quality documentation because a lot of energy went into crafting it

That's a good recommendation. On the other hand, there's an added difficulty for me to explain what I know because it's all in English and my native language is Greek. When I try to explain e.g. the subject of my PhD studies to my relatives or friends, I find that I simply do not have the Greek vocabulary to do it.

I started translating one of my papers in Greek just to address this limitation, but I guess I got bored and gave up midway.

I'm fine with explaining it all in English though. At the risk of inducing terminal boredom :)

I came here to say this. Once I get something, it becomes too obvious.

I understand a few complex topics, but I often fail to explain them on the first few attempts. So I realise that certain parts of the topics move in and out of my "working memory", but they are too large for me to grasp them entirely at any point in time.

Sigh. I don't believe this aids the discussion in any meaningful way at all.

To me this is the very crux of the conversation.