Deliberate Mistake, correct end result

I've spent my army service days as an infantry soldier.
A lot of my unit's field practice included night navigation - Where you learn a path (By heart), and sent to navigate few miles at night, and collect a few waypoints.

The most challenging part of these drills was not walking with 35 pounds of gear on, or even seeing what's ahead of you to avoid pitfalls. It was memorising the path, and walking through it - If you don't know everything by heart (Sometimes you only have 20 minutes to prepare your gear and learn the path), you're bound to get lost. If you get lost, you walk more. If you walk more, you'll be more tired. And so begins a downward spiral no one likes.

I found that the most effective way for me to study these paths was using the deliberate mistake method: Where you choose a point on the map that's easy to recognise and reach, and from there walk to the nearest waypoints. This would sometimes mean walking more than the 'direct' approach, but you'd be less likely to forget a turn or a hill, and less 'marks' to count when you're walking, at night, with your gear on.

Nowadays, sometimes when I look at decisions I need to make, I sometimes take the 'wrong' decision, to reach a larger goal sooner - Like coding some ugly patch - I know I can correct this mistake later, but I also know I would also reach my goals on time, with confidence.