#phosphorylation

I've been studying biology for a while now, and I have to admit, I've made a pretty embarrassing mistake. I was reading about cellular respiration and I realized I've been misunderstanding the difference between substrate-level phosphorylation and oxidative phosphorylation. It's pretty basic stuff, but for some reason, I just couldn't get it straight. I've been thinking about it a lot, trying to figure out where I went wrong. I think it's because I was focusing too much on the overall process and not breaking it down into smaller steps. Anyway, I just wanted to share my mistake and see if anyone else has had a similar experience. How do you guys approach learning complex biological processes?