tl;dr: Anytime you find yourself making an assumption, stop. Educate yourself on that assumption and then move on. I had a very similar problem when it came to

tl;dr: Anytime you find yourself making an assumption, stop. Educate yourself on that assumption and then move on. I had a very similar problem when it came to learning. I am very fast at picking things up, so I often skim and assume certain things based on context. This has caused me several problems especially related to large projects and some implementation details. However, I have found a very effective way of getting around it. When I am reading something and I see something that I can define by the context, I make a point of at least wiki'ing/googling the point in question. For example, I was doing some embedded Linux stuff and working with some IO using sysfs. I could do what I needed and had a general understanding of how sysfs worked (based on context/assumption). However, once I learned up on sysfs and how it was implemented, it gave me a much greater understanding of what I was doing with the IO and how I should handle it according to my end goal.