Similary idea: I used to be a TA and every week I would sort ~50 papers or exams alphabetically to make it easier to verify accuracy in the grading spreadsheet. Sorting this many papers regularly forces you to find a good way to do it, and it's hard to avoid recursion.
Even better: sort something physically large like several bookshelves of books or a record collection. You can't hold the collection in your hand and you're forced to use piles. You may even decide to work bookshelf by bookshelf first.
These are all good ways to develop intuition for sorting algorithms. Personally I always just use quicksort until I've come to a part of the alphabet where I can immediately recall which letter precedes every other then I do insertion sort. You might decide to use another hybrid sort like timsort.
Even better: sort something physically large like several bookshelves of books or a record collection. You can't hold the collection in your hand and you're forced to use piles. You may even decide to work bookshelf by bookshelf first.
These are all good ways to develop intuition for sorting algorithms. Personally I always just use quicksort until I've come to a part of the alphabet where I can immediately recall which letter precedes every other then I do insertion sort. You might decide to use another hybrid sort like timsort.