I think the skill you need is time management. or rather yet, laziness. as Bill Gates once said, he will always get a lazy person because he will find an easy w

I think the skill you need is time management. or rather yet, laziness. as Bill Gates once said, he will always get a lazy person because he will find an easy way to do it. think about it as a business (whether it is or not) every action has a price, in cash or in time or in both. aim for low hanging fruits. adapt to changes when they happen. experiment in small scale. no person in the world can come up with design in their head and that would be it. software is never ending cycle of improving, layering, adapting. more often than not, stillness means death. design evolves with the code, what makes good design is how easy it is to evolve, and that takes skills and experience. sounds like you have the skills ("hack together until they work") and 3 years experience is no joke. to sum it up, my advice to you is to look at case studies of success and failure, these lessons often reflect on more than just programming