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Of course things may vary considerably from one person to another. Yet I can give you my experience of the last two years with category theory. For applied category theory anything goes as standard maths : rest from time to time etc... But for categories theory itself (or its first applications) I believe the pace is a bit special because it "recables" your brain in a way different from that other of fields (in which re-cabling is due to focusing on one type of object).

Typically I tend to describe categorical definitions as rather short or almost trivial yet THICK! You have to use them several time before being cabled.

I believe there that the reason lies in the 'abstract nonsense': a categorical definition make sense only when applied to specific examples which are yet abstract. Hope it helps.

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Of course things may vary considerably from one person to another. Yet I can give you my experience of the last two years with category theory. For applied category theory anything goes as standard maths : rest from time to time etc... But for categories theory itself (or its first applications) I believe the pace is a bit special because it "recables" your brain in a way different from that other fields (in which re-cabling is due to focusing on one type of object).

Typically I tend to describe categorical definitions as rather short or almost trivial yet THICK! You have to use them several time before being cabled.

I believe there the reason lies in the 'abstract nonsense': a categorical definition make sense only when applied to specific examples which are yet abstract. Hope it helps.