What are best tricks to solve complex Organic Chemistry reactions and mechanisms? I'm unable to recollect them and often get confused.

• First of all ( and most important of all ) I learned to see elements of group 17

• as some kind of electron hungry beings which want electrons at any cost ( remember this one is most important to solve any problem as most of reactions involve halogens) , and apply the same down the group in 17th group as hunger decreases except for chlorine when electron gain enthalpy gets into play .
• If you are able to get the funny looking above idea fixed into your mind then you are half the way into solving all problems , for the second funny idea , think of electrons as some kind of currency

• now see the groups which donate electrons as rich groups and which accept them as poor groups ( thieves ) , now for example take carbon atom which is neutral (middle class) , let us say now we attacked it with a electron deficient group ( say -NO2 ) i.e, poor group or thieve , now carbon acts as rich guy here and donates its electrons to -NO2 so
• it becomes partially poorer from a middle class group , but if we have to take into account the stability of carbon than we must make sure that another thieve must not attack carbon as carbon is already poor due to -NO2 , so then it needs help from the rich groups like -CH3 , NH2 etc. so if we attack the carbon with these groups then the poor carbon regains its middle class status , so the basic idea of this point is that the poor should not get poorer and rich should not get richer for stability of compound
• The above two funny ideas would have solved most of your problems by now ,

• coming to the the third funny idea based on above two , by now you must be knowing that there is no organic chemistry without benzene in it , so this idea is to deal with benzene and its derivatives , now it is a little weird type of compound which behaves as ultra rich with poor groups or thieves and acts as a nice thieve with rich groups , but remember it has a property that if the element has a lone pair i.e, a bank account with deposits in it , then it becomes the thieve of thieves , and so it makes the thieves also poorer which means it takes electrons from the group irrespective of its thief properties if it has lone pair of electrons in the atom directly attached to benzene . So it makes benzene the thieves of thieves and the king of kings .
• and remember to rank the elements of group 16 as second hungriest ( poor , thief ) elements after 17th group and again the third hungriest as 15 and from there on wards rich groups start .
• Coming to mechanism part , it is completely governed by above given points , to understand what I am saying in this point just take out a organic mechanism book and check if anything goes out of scope of what I explained , of course there will certainly be some exceptions which happen due to certain reasons like isomerism , steric factors , properties of solvents , and certain other things
• there are certain areas where you will find that one is major product and

• other minor , here the major role is played by the stability of intermediate formed during the reaction process , so the product decider is stability , and again go with ideas I explained above to decide stability of intermediate .
• Of course I am not writing an organic chemistry book to explain each and every mechanism and their properties , so what I can tell you is that try to love organic chemistry and try to be able to appreciate the concept involved in product formation , because it is a perfect blend of inorganic chemistry and physical chemistry ( it involves thermodynamics in most(each) of its reactions and also it involves chemical kinetics in it ) , and I believe it is the more logical of the three branches of chemistry .

But always remember , stability of product is everything in organic chemistry .