Back in 1965 my Dad gave me a big bag of resistors and a small card with the colour code on them.
I set to it putting them into piles of values. By the time I finished I knew the colour codes and threw away the card. I have never forgotten them despite going for months at a time now not reading them as most of my work uses surface mount.
As others say you don't translate the colours one by one, you just look at it an you know it's value.