The wrong approach. It's a major downfall of mine. Trying to solve a problem by approaching it wrong and looking for a difficult solution. The thing is I'm not looking for the difficult way to solve the problem on purpose, I just keep happen to be looking in that general direction.

Take the problem I had today.

For three hours I tried to find the solution to a problem I was having in a clients application. I spoke to the client at the end of the day to give them an update on my progress and five minutes after the call the solution was clear.

The client didn't provide the solution. It was just one of those moments when everything fell into place and all of a sudden the solution became clear. I wish these moments presented themselves more often.

The truth is I simply need read up more on the programming languages and frameworks I'm working with on a daily basis. The everyday knowledge only gets you so far. When you've exhausted that you need to look towards the more advanced parts. It's only when I learn these advanced parts that I will truly rid myself of looking at problems with the wrong approach.