If you persist and modularize your knowledge so you can reuse it later, you start to accumulate knowledge blocks and procedures that are leveraged later on.

Software Engineering is an example of how to apply this. Pieces of code that appear to be useful in other parts are converted into functions. We then use these functions together to build an application. Furthermore, if this application is useful in other contexts, it becomes a building block to these more complex tasks.

Knowledge work can be approached the same way through note-taking and networked thinking. Any insight or useful piece of information is persisted and connected to its larger purpose. Most of the times, this larger purpose is a project. When a future project overlaps with a past project, we won't have to research and distill information again. It's already there in our knowledge base.