Slow at problem solving and stuck for too long - missing eye for detail

[u/anxious_human20]

Hey devs

I am a developer with 4.5 years of experience, mostly backend ( java with AEM ) and some frontend but not crazy animation stuff. I have a few problems and need help to fix that from propele who have faced it.

• I am slow with my tasks, I stare and overthink too much. I feel like my archiotect does the job in 2 hours that I take a whole day ( like 10-12 hours ) to even finish to an extent. It is not that I use social media or anything in between, i sit down and stay literally glues to my laptop try my best except for the lunch and evening break. But my productivity is very low.
• 2nd I have a very bad eye for detail. i build things and miss the basics which are always visible to my archietct at just a glance. Certain scenarios, certain edge cases and even a lot of basic obvious things I miss. I am almost at the level of mid senior dev as I am hitting 5Y of experience, I cannot be like this
• I cannot think like an architect;
• I cannot rcommend a good solution approach. I cannot even think of the big system which to an extent I am supposed to be able to as per my role .
• I am afraid of new things ( when a problem comes I become anxious instead of excieted ). My juniors say I am doing good, and I am a good mentor and I have good capability but I do not even feel that way. My thoughts feel limited and I cannot think beyond the small component ( cannot think in terms of systems and integrations).
• And I am afraid to lead things, to take the role where I am supposed to own my decisons and the whole project.

Anyone with some experience or someone who has overcome this please share your story or how you did it and how I can do things. I need this very badly, cannot talk about these with my seniors exactly but I need a roadmap to actually become more cpable, more competent and a lot better engineer ( not a coopy paste guy or a guy who just does what his architect and manager tells him to do. I do not always want to wait for the instructions )

[u/FewPotato2413]

i am a junior, but i think maybe u can start reading programming books...? maybe books like the famous design data intensive applications

also in your free time, maybe u can contribute to open source? i mean reading people's code and understand how things work also can shape up your solution architect skills...

at least thats how i am trying to improve my skills, read more programming books and also find an open source tool i am using, then fork the repo, then read how people write the code...

[u/anxious_human20 → u/FewPotato2413]

Should I start with design data intensive applications or any other book that is good for thinking about systems in general? Just asking before I start.
Anyway, thanks for the response.

[u/FewPotato2413 → u/anxious_human20]

Below is my personal Oreilly books playlist for studying system designs...if you are a more visual person, you can choose to read head first series books...hope this playlist helps. Happy learning, and cheers !

1. Personal Books Playlists