If you are a visual learner, you should make sure you can draw statecharts (not decision/flow-charts), process diagrams, UML-style diagrams by hand. Learn the c

If you are a visual learner, you should make sure you can draw statecharts (not decision/flow-charts), process diagrams, UML-style diagrams by hand. Learn the conventions. Then learn the design-patterns in the gof book and make sure you can draw a singleton, delegate, etc... Next bust out a notebook and start trying to draw your solution (by hand) before you sit at a keyboard. IMHO all of the UML diagramming software are a bunch of crap but being able to understand a bunch of code as a picture should help allow your brain to see the forest for the trees.