A key question to probe in your journey is by looking to see what's left after the dust has settled. Where you look is critical. If you have to look outside your own mind, then you haven't actually built any foundation.
I will give you an example:
TIL
Learned that folding hose is 10x easier than coiling it.
1. create a oval circle,
2. drag it from the middle until the two ends mostly meet creating a sharp V,
3. walk to the middle and repeat step 2 and 3.
End of example
This is a divide and conquer strategy. I looked after the dust has settled and found a cool program that is still operating years later. The foundation is rock hard.
I can see that the efficiency delta is:
Coiling: BigO(n)
Folding: BigO(n * log(n))
I didn't have to move my eyes away from the screen to arrive to the solution. I can do it outside on a nice sunny day.
Software development is extremely inhumane as a career.