Work with other people. Preferably a mix of people who seem less/equal/more capable than you are, but if you have to pick one, go with working with people that

Work with other people. Preferably a mix of people who seem less/equal/more capable than you are, but if you have to pick one, go with working with people that are above your level. Look at how they work, how they approach problems. Get code reviews from them, and review their code. Don't get set in your ways (or the ways of those better than you), be willing to try new things and see if it fits your style. Go slow before you go fast. It took you a month to add copy/paste -- so what? Next time, put in extra effort to try new ways of working, playing with the code, writing invisible support code no one else will see, writing tests perhaps, writing English before code, getting feedback, etc., instead of what I assume your normal approach is of "need to get this out quickly!", and it'll probably take two months, but so what? Eventually you'll get faster as enough experiences have taught you what goes well and what doesn't, but you need to slow down to get those experiences first. Of course, some people are just super-geniuses. Measuring yourself against them is just a recipe for depression. To quote 'Eliezer: "...if you have difficulty with any programming concept, you must not be a supergenius. You're just an ordinary genius at best. The sad truth is that there are some people for whom programming comes as naturally as thinking, with code formed as easily as thoughts; and if it takes an effort to understand any aspect of programming, you have just learned that you are not one of those people. Alas."