If you ever opened an editing project after a week away and felt completely lost, that is not a memory problem. That is a project structure problem. Professional editing software does not organise your media for you. It trusts you to do that before you start.
Premiere Pro uses a Project panel with bins. DaVinci Resolve uses a media pool with folders. Both tools expect you to build a logical filing system before you cut a single frame. Most beginners skip this entirely, drag everything onto the timeline, and then spend 20 minutes hunting for a specific clip two days later.
A filing structure that actually holds up
Working editors typically separate footage by shoot day or scene, keep audio in its own folder, separate graphics and motion assets, and label sequences by version. It sounds boring because it is boring. It also means you can hand a project to another editor and have them oriented within five minutes.
The deeper issue is that a messy project creates decision fatigue. When you cannot find your assets quickly, you spend cognitive energy on logistics instead of editorial choices. Most early failures with editing software are at least partly a project hygiene problem, not a skills problem.