Emacs tends to have its own names for many concepts, making things even more obtuse.
But yes, to be frank, my productivity in Emacs really took off once I started memorizing things with flashcards. I currently have 603 cards for Emacs (including elisp).
(And telling a newbie that would cause a lot of despair!)[2]
The other thing that really helped is I started using/making hydras.[1] So now when I encounter a new, interesting mode, instead of memorizing lots of command names or keybindings, I just build my own custom menus.
[1] https://github.com/abo-abo/hydra
[2] But it really shouldn't. Emacs, with all its packages, and modes, is like a language with all its libraries, and not just the standard ones. Remembering all the commands/keybindings is akin to expecting someone to know all the APIs in all the libraries. It's OK if you don't. Most people don't.
I just yank into a new buffer, set it to xml mode, "M-x indent" reveals the command to format xml (indent-region or indent-buffer or something like that), enter, yank it back. Done.
In an editor with a gui, I would just go to "Help -> Search" and do pretty much the same, which would reveal the menu item to click to achieve something. I find emacs ido/helm workflow for this much better. Never need to memorize anything.
In emacs I can use "apropos" (i.e. "c-h a") or "c-h v" for example to search for ways to accomplish what I'd like to do.