I think its a lot simpler than people are thinking.
The way I am interpreting it, say you are asked the make the best cake you can for a bake off. You have good knowledge, you pour all into it. Then when the cake is done, you show it off. It gets rated.
Then you are asked to make the next cake for the competition. But you used all your knowledge on the last one, and need to learn more to make it better, to be one up from before.
If you make that cake right after the last, you haven't had any time to learn new skills. You will make a cake the same, if not worse because you are, say, tired or out of fresh ideas to improve.
So take a week off. Learn to bake better. The rating and skill level goes up naturally in time, right? Or, read baking books, aka invest in purpose research to up the knowledge.
If you are already clever (ie good designer) then learning new baking skills comes naturally and in a week or so you will be refreshed and back to good levels.
If you arent so shit hot (ie bad designer) then sitting at home and hoping your skill goes back up will happen slowwwwly. Or not at all. Your punk ass needs to read books pronto to improve those skills, aka using those designers to learn about that part and research it.
I could be wrong, but since I have had ZERO research men on the ground, I believe I might be at least partly right as my levels are dropping as parts are designed, but go up again by themselves. My fuel tank went down to unsure this time last week. Now it's very good doing shit all to it.