Thoughts on 'Ideal Programming Technique'

One thing I've tried to learn this year (and certainly, that Lee has tried to impart, is that I shouldn't just aim to get the job done, but do get it done efficiently. That certainly seems to be a worthy goal.
A less elegant way of putting that is: "Programmers are lazy".

Sometimes, I've thought that I simply don't have time to do something "properly", as long as I get it to work.
Sometimes, I simply forget the method to do something "properly", or I hadn't come across it yet. And shoot, I may be very intelligent, but I can't know X if I haven't been taught X. (I might be able to deduce it based on something I already know, but I might accidentally get X wrong, or it might take time)

Often, when I've been doing something improperly or inelegantly, it's easy to go back to the code with the 'problem' in it, and change it. Keeping this in mind, I often think 'Hey, I've got a bazillion other things to worry about for this program, I'll get back to X later'.