Reading through the entire recipe before starting to cook can help avoid many mistakes.
For example, if you are making Hummus the recipe probably will tell you to drain the garbanzo beans. If you read on, the instructions will tell you to reserve some of the can’s juice so you can adjust the texture of the Hummus. Whoops! You didn’t read the recipe first and all the juices ran down the drain.
I recently made some Almost-Famous Bang-Bang Shrimp, a recipe I’d made many times, but not recently. I merrily combined the ingredients without reading the recipe and then couldn’t figure out why the sauce was thicker and hotter that I remembered. In the directions the recipe calls for adding some water.  Water is not always included in the ingredient list. Lesson Learned.