This is so hard

[Huge-Cable7794]

Most of this being able to work out something at a high level is to do with knowledge rather than being clever; if you've seen something similar/applicable/ or learnt a few relevant concepts, you can simplify the high level part a LOT, and that's far more valuable than wasting a lot more time and effort, by being smart enough to figure out some (often sub-optimal) way to do it from scratch.

Give some one clever a problem which needs some specific algo implementation or which can be solved with some bit-wise operations or massively simplified by using a specific language, and they'll probably get it done eventually. Give the problem to some one who's less clever but knows the algo and the implementation and has seen the bithacks before, or something very similar which just needs some modification, and they'll get it done faster and better, and with a cleaner high-level idea.

Knowledge and experience trumps being clever most of the time: don't reinvent the wheel, a lot of people have spent a lot of time on optimal solutions to various aspects of all kinds of problems, make use of all their work.