Why do we forget tactics?

I know that it happens due to lack of practice, but that's not what I mean. Why is it in the nature of tactics to be forgettable? When one, say, learns the basic multiplication table, it's very hard to forget it. Polynom formulae might be easier to forget, but all it takes is a few minutes of refreshing it, and it's there for years to come.

I've never taken a break from chess the way I have from maths, yet I can't seem to store chess tactics in my memory the same way. I can learn how to play a chess position, then forget it if I don't play it for a few months. Is there a way to hard-code tactics into your brain and not have them disappear quickly and easily? Seems that anything other than continuous practice doesn't cut it, but that sucks massively. I don't learn that stuff only to forget it and waste more time on relearning.

I get it, but why is visualisation so much more fragile than number-related work? I don't have eidetic memory, so I can't improve my tactical vision without getting obsessed with it... and I can't exactly do that to myself anymore.

And your answer to my question is...?

Wait, how are you aware that you've played at least 1000 games? Is that a guess or...?

So, what would you say is the most non-roundabout way of learning chess? Any book/video tutorial recommendations in general? I imagine the Move By Move series is good, any others?

That's how the tactics trainers generally tend to sort those by default... good point, I should go through them thematically. Still, wouldn't it be detrimental for me to know what kind of tactic to expect? Would that help me build an awareness of those tactics when they actually occur in any of my games?

Also, a gripe I have with tactics trainers like Chesstempo is the fact that they only ever provide the correct engine line whenever I go wrong, so I don't get to see what's wrong with my choice; instead, I am only told that it's wrong, and then I just get shown the one the computer says is right.

the Calculation is needed not the memorization...once u acquire the skill, u just need to see checks,sacs and smtymes intuitional moves... n tactics will be everywhere...boom!

How do you study Tactics btw? Online interactive? What books? What apps? If you study the ineffective or inefficient way, you learn little, remember little.

Because anything in life is easy to forget if you don't put in the effort to make it stick. If you're attending a college lecture, and you take no notes and don't do the homework, do you expect to remember the material two months later when you're tested on it?

You don't forget chess tactics OP, you forget elaborate multiple-step calculations of tactics. 

Comparing it with math it would be like mental arithmetic of 3 decimal numbers. You can practice all you want but you reach a point where you can't really do it any better. That's when you're better off studying and understanding chess principles, do not waste your time on tactical exercises.  

The big difference between solving tactics puzzles and producing the same solutions in a game is that, merely because the puzzle is set, you know that a clever solution is there somewhere.

I propose playing with Engines can sharpen tactical awareness. Handicaps can be applied like limiting search depth to 5 or 7 plies. Use a short opening book like Perfect 2018, no EGTB, shorter time for the engine like 5 minutes and unlimited for human.

You seem to be ignoring how different forms of knowledge get retained differently. You learn the single-digit multiplication table, and it sticks. You solve single-move mates, and they don't as well. Perhaps I should learn the double-digit multiplication table, then see if my tactical and calculational acuteness improves or I start forgetting the new table instead? We gotta gauge the difficulties here, because if someone defined the mental effort of retaining chess visualisation by scaling it to some other effort with a highly predictable time/energy ratio, then I would be able to deduce if investing into practicing chess tactics is truly worth it or not.

That's fair to an extent, but sometimes you won't see it until you either a) spend a lot of time trying to figure it out without actually moving the pieces (so, visualisation, just like in real games and the tactics trainers) or b) get shown the solution. There is such thing as persistent blindness to some motifs, and sometimes the time needed to figure something out isn't worth it.

Let's put it like this, then: how can we glance upon a position and figure out the best answer quickly, then glance upon that same position a few months later and have trouble understanding it at all? Perhaps it does not pertain exclusively to tactical positions, but missed tactics lose way more games than missed strategies. How do we lose the imagination? How do we lose visualisation?

My problem is that I find visualisation too taxing. I like employing it generally, but usually I don't have that much time in my games to just go over everything at a leisurely pace; instead, I see some stuff then I don't see other stuff, or I see 90+% of the stuff and then I lose on time if the tactics don't lead either to a checkmate or a braindead-easy endgame. It seems too much of an effort for me to have to constantly remind myself of certain positions through means other than just playing the game.

I'll definitely think about it, although that might be a double-edged sword for me, as I'm already a perfectionist in other areas of my life, and that rarely ever yields any results that I find truly satisfactory. I can allow myself to be an obsessive-compulsive mess in a recording studio, but that's because I create a recording for my artistic fulfillment and/or get money for it (and that happens around three times a year only, anyhow). Chess cannot give me that satisfaction, as I can't earn any money from it nor expect to consistently play games that are going to be artistically pleasing. I need a purpose for chess in my life, and whatever it was up until now, it's time for that to evolve, or I'll remain stuck in my addiction cycles for nothing.