The shortcut that skips understanding the problem usually becomes the long way.

Skipping the part where you understand the problem works often enough to be tempting, and fails in a way that costs much more than the time it saved. You end up fixing the wrong thing confidently, then fixing that, and the hour you protected turns into three. Understanding is not the slow route, it is the route with fewer repeats.

Next time you are stuck, spend five minutes writing what the problem actually is before you try anything. On homework, do one question slowly and properly rather than six by pattern matching.