Mr. Scary, when I learn a new lick, I take note of what box it is in and where it belongs in the progression. Then I play on the porch using it along with all the other licks I know, in every combination and at every tempo (fast blues, slow blues, in-between). I don't number them. And I also remember them by their fingering patterns, not by the notes in them. Using them that way in a playing on the porch fashion hammers them into long term memory. It also puts into long term memory which other licks it works well with. I spend probably 10 times longer doing this than it takes to learn the lick in the first place, and the more licks I know, the longer it takes. But if I don't do it I will forget that lick in a day or two. It also keeps all of my other licks in memory. That's just me. Others may have other ways of remembering their licks.
And I find that after a while, a good share of my licks are permanently in memory / muscle memory ... like riding a bicycle. I can not play at all for a solid month or more and still remember them. Some of my old country licks I still remember after not playing them for 20 years.
Another thing is that playing on the porch with them not only gets them into long-term memory, it allows me to literally hear them in my head just before actually playing them when I am improvising.
What's funny is that, in your own way, this is exactly the process I outline in the course. Just goes to show you that at some level, everyone does it the same way no matter what we all call it or what it looks like in detail.
What you're calling "playing on the porch style" is basically steps 1 and 2 of my 4 steps to mastery... and if you do that enough and have enough experience, you can pretty much skip steps 3 and 4 which you probably do currently.
As to Mr. Scary's point... you can call them whatever you want, you don't have to use lick 1, lick 2, lick 3, etc. In fact, if you can have some sort of more descriptive name (that makes sense to you, it doesn't have to make a lick of sense to another living soul on this planet) that might help you a lot in assimilating the licks long term.
I had to use numbers to make a point in the demonstration - it's a common denominator for everyone to understand. In the real world I think of ideas like - "triplets starting on beat 2 and moving into the IV chord." That would make a lot more sense to me.
Over time, you'll also find that every lick you know has some unique feature, and as you get better at noticing that unique feature, you'll call that lick because of that unique feature.
Think of your licks like your own personal army of musical soldiers where each one does a lot of the same stuff, but most of them all do 1 thing especially well. The better you get at identifying that one thing and exploiting it to your advantage, the better things will sound. So always be on the lookout for the feature of a lick that makes it great - and again it only has to make sense to you.
I have said elsewhere in the forum that I rarely count any more, and I don't, but for anyone who hasn't gotten there yet, what Griff says about it in his "How to improvise a blues solo" course is absolutely critical.
