TL;DR - Writing about the problem on paper is my biggest coding lifehack. Paper offloads your brain, and an offloaded brain finds better solutions.
My biggest coding lifehack is dev journaling. When I'm working on something, I write down what I'm doing and how the process is going - on paper.
Something happens when the problem is sitting there in front of me. I look at it and get another idea. Then another. I keep putting pieces together like this until I have a solution I'm actually proud of.
The mechanism is simple: when you write a thing down, your brain offloads that part of the problem. It stops holding it in memory and frees up to work on the next part of the solution. Write, offload, solve, repeat - until you're finished.
If you're not writing things down, you're missing out on ideas you would otherwise have.