Problem solving and studying material
Hello everyone,
I'm currently an undergraduate studying physics and I've noticed that my ability to solve problems along with me studying certain material doesn't align that well.
For example I'll study for a certain class and whenever I'm finished with reading and studying the given material I find myself not being able to do anything (in the more challenging problems) whenever I'm faced with a certain problem according to that material
While I was trying to understand why that was happening, I realized that the main problem is that I'm mostly trying to get a picture in my head of a certain problem and try to visualize the motion, etc and translate it into math and try to solve from there, but what I feel like that lacks certain constraints that a problem might have that you can't really imagine. For example one of my most recent problems that I've tried was about a certain liquid flowing and it required me to use the constraint that the flow is laminar but because I was failing to imagine that the flow is laminar I didn't write down that specific constraint and failed to solve the problem, and my only solution to just recall certain constraints for laminar flow from memory, which I think is not a really good and scalable way of thinking because it quickly fails when there's more material to work with and a lot of time certain change in the way a problem is represented can quickly fail if you just recall constraints/equations/laws from memory (if you think otherwise let me know).
So now to my question. Do you think that my current approach is correct but I should try harder on visualizing laws and equations that appear on a textbook, or do you have some other mental models or ways of thinking that you use and recommend?