I'll give a simple example: a question asked me to produce a subset of S, which is a power set of the cartesian product of two power sets of cartesian products of sets A and B. I managed to get it eventually, but god was I holding on.
This got me thinking about how I have quite a lot of trouble with recursion and anything that requires nested layers, specifically coming up with quick accurate answers. I am usually able to work it out with a great deal of paperwork, but it takes some time, and a week later I read back and forget how I got down the mental labyrinth in the first place. Which is inconvenient if I have to use these skills in more complex tasks.
The issue extends into other topics...visualising things in topology etc.
If anyone feels there were strategies that helped them improve at this, I would very much love to learn how!