[cobratbq]

1. Be thorough. Be sure you fully understand the issue, instead of jumping to conclusions.

2. Keep asking 'why'. Make sure you understand what the problem (or rather the requested feature) is, instead of being able to parrot what someone else says the problem is. (Even if the conclusion ends up being the same, you need the gained comprehension to determine the right solution.)

3. Separation of concerns. Keep practicing on separating orthogonal concerns that are all seemingly relevant to a problem. Evaluate each concern separately. Drop any of the concerns that are irrelevant in solving the solution. This can save you huge amounts of time, enough to make a deadline you would otherwise never make. (This will also help you to reduce the amount of added complexity.)