Question

The accepted approach (at least what they taught me in yeshiva) to analytical study is to do it independently—you try to arrive at your own understanding of the passage from the Talmud, the medieval authorities (Rishonim), and the major later authorities, and only afterward maybe check what the very latest authorities said about the topic.
But most of the time when I do this, in the end I see that the later authorities (or the very latest ones) already wrote my understanding, only on a much higher level, and I ask myself why I sat over it for two hours during study session when I could simply have read them from the outset and reached the same understanding (especially nowadays, when there are tools like Metivta that summarize the explanations of the later authorities on a passage in a fairly convenient way).
Do you think it is really important to try to arrive at an understanding of a passage independently, despite the great amount of time that it takes? And if so, why?