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Or how I learned to kick an anger-management book through the window...
Photographers should make great students. We are always learning something, and generally on a personal basis - most of the mistakes we make are at our own cost. Oh, that doesn't mean that others cannot contribute to the mess, but we foot the bill in some way. If it isn't money it's embarrassment.
Take the business of editing your images on the computer. Whether you use a laptop or a desktop machine - and I'm assuming that you aren't just poking away at a mobile phone or tablet for serious occasions - you are going to be putting in some time with any project. Amateur work or professional, there are far more images taken than used, and a great deal of work is spent culling out the usable ones. That can be a hellish task if you are a photographer who shoots everything on Continuous High Speed with a big card and a heavy finger.
In the old days of sheet film and the sound of between $ 2 and $10 escaping from your wallet every time you pressed the shutter release, there was no problem culling images. You developed the one you had in your hand. Then you retouched the neg and printed it and convinced the client that it was what they wanted. There was a certain spare logic to that.
Computer editing and retouching ( and that is what we are doing, automatic programs or not ) actions can be fast in themselves but it is surprising how much the small periods of time they take can add up. Start spotting on the big blemishes and eventually you start to see the small ones as well...and they seem to multiply faster than your stylus can trace them. It's not just sensor dust - some people are just naturally spotty.
Some skies seem to be, as well. Seagulls watch photographers and wheel into position at just the wrong time to smudge up the horizon. And as for group shots...well, unless you are doing regimental portraits and the commanding general and the regimental sergeant major are both present, you can count on someone not being focused enough to look forward when the shutter fires. You'll have to take several shots in quick succession and depend upon the magic of Photoshop to give you enough raw material to work on.
But therein lies the rub. Watch out when you try to do the complex job that requires many steps and subassemblies. We've all been cautioned about saving our work...as if the computers and interments of the world are the danger. Nothing of the sort.
The danger is us. We can save our work all we want if we hit the " save " button at the right time. We can also hit the " don't save " button with the same amount of effort...because the computer people put it right there on the screen beside the other one. And if you have been editing and compositing and artisting it all over the place for hours - and it is after 10:00 at night - you are just as likely to send your work to Hades as you are to save it.
One button, one press, one scream in the night...
It's like driving at night on Western Australian county roads. There are trees out there that have been there for hundreds of years and you haven't hit them yet, but they are patient vegetables. Drive tired and even the little ol' trees that'll just barely kill you are a danger.
