Critique Your Debugging Process On A Bug That Took Too Long

You finally found it, it was something small and obvious in hindsight, and you're annoyed at how long it took to get there. This looks back at your actual process: where the time really went, whether you had a hypothesis before you started changing things, and the one habit worth changing.

<context>
You've just fixed a bug that took far longer than it should have and want to critique your own process before the same pattern repeats.
</context>

<task>
**Critique** the debugging process described in [describe the bug, the steps you took, and roughly how long each stage took]. Identify:
1. Where you wasted the most time
2. Whether you had a hypothesis before you started changing code
3. What information you didn't have at the start that would have shortened this significantly
4. One habit to change
</task>

<output_format>
A short retrospective with the time-wasting step named plainly, the missing information identified, and one concrete change to your process for next time.
</output_format>