How can I efficiently use Ctrl+R for command history in the terminal?

The behavior you're experiencing is due to the readline library that your shell uses. When you press Ctrl+R, you initiate a backward search in your command history for a specific string. If you hit Ctrl+R again, it fetches an earlier instance of what you've searched for. To go forward in the search, the default command is Ctrl+S, but beware that in most terminals, Ctrl+S might pause the terminal. You can find more shortcuts and details in the readline man page.

When you hit Ctrl+R, it starts the search from the most recent command. You can keep pressing Ctrl+R after typing to go further back. For going forward, you can use Ctrl+S, but if your terminal stops working instead, you might want to remap it to something like Ctrl+F. Alternatively, you can use the 'history' command to see a list of your previous commands or the history expansion feature in bash using '!' with the command string to quickly access your commands.