Whenever I work out a physics, math, or (to a lesser extent) computer science problem, I picture a solution in my mind fairly quickly. Once I’ve got my mind around the basics of it, I keep pushing and poking and proding, coaxing it to take shape. If someone comes along and shows me (or I go and find) a quicker, easier way of doing things, I usually regard it with a sort of ‘that’s nice’ attitude, and then go back to coaxing my solution into giving me the right answer. The problem is that if my first solution is unsightly, difficult, or just non workable, I have to keep going at it until i’ve proved to myself that it’s either impossible or just really ugly to do it my way. If i somehow managed to get ‘my way’ to work and then the answer I get is different from the ‘correct one’ It really causes issues because I have to sit there and look my way over and over until I can figure out what I did wrong. It makes a homework assignment that should only take an hour stretch out to 3 or more.