(I’ve read the general science chapters Creativity and You and Your Research)
Creativity
There is the first recognition of the problem in some dim sense. This is followed by a longer or shorter period of refinement of the problem. Do not be too hasty at this stage, as you are likely to put the problem in the conventional form and find only the conventional solution.
Creative insights often come when we drop a problem from conscious effort
A long gestation period of intense thinking about the problem may result in a solution, or else the temporary abandonment of the problem. This temporary abandonment is a common feature of many great creative acts. The monomaniacal pursuit often does not work; the temporary dropping of the idea sometimes seems to be essential to let the subconscious find a new approach.
False starts and false solutions, gradually sharpening your approach.
My method, and it is implied above, is to saturate the subconscious with the problem, try to not think seriously about anything else for hours, days, or even weeks, and thus the subconscious which, so far as we know, depends heavily upon live experiences to form its dreams, etc. is then left with only the problem to mull over. We simply deprive it of all else as best we can!
Probably the most important tool in creativity is the use of an analogy.
On getting down to the fundamentals and actively working with new knowledge as you learn:
It is obvious you need many “hooks” on the knowledge if you are to use it in new situations
Good notes have many hooks for effective retreival
Over the years of watching and working with John Tukey I found many times he recalled the relevant information and I did not, until he pointed it out to me. Clearly his information retrieval system had many more “hooks” than mine did. At least more useful ones! How could this be? Probably because he was more in the habit than I was of turning over new information again and again so his “hooks” for retrieval were more numerous and significantly better than mine were. Hence wishing I could similarly do what he did, I started to mull over new ideas, trying to make significant “hooks” to relevant information so when later I went fishing for an idea I had a better chance of finding an analogy. I can only advise you to do what I tried to do—when you learn something new think of other applications of it—ones which have not arisen in your past but which might in your future. How easy to say, but how hard to do! Yet, what else can I say about how to organize your mind so useful things will be recalled readily at the right time?
We are, in a very real sense, the sum total of our habits, and nothing more; hence by changing our habits, once we understand which ones we should change and in what directions and understand our limitations in changing ourselves, then we are on the path along which we want to go.
You and Your Research
What you consider first class work is up to you; you must pick your goals, but make them high!
You prepare yourself to succeed, or not, as you choose, from moment to moment, by the way you live your life.
It is hard work, applied for long years, which leads to the creative act, and it is rarely just handed to you without any serious effort on your part. Yes, sometimes it just happens, and then it is pure luck. It seems to me to be folly for you to depend solely on luck for the outcome of this one life you have to lead.
Doing important work starts with working on important problems
Among the important properties to have is the belief you can do important things. If you do not work on important problems how can you expect to do important work? Yet, direct observation, and direct questioning of people, shows most scientists spend most of their time working on things they believe are not important nor are they likely to lead to important things.
I began by asking what the important problems were in chemistry, then later what important problems they were working on, and finally one day said, “If what you are working on is not important and not likely to lead to important things, then why are you working on it?” After that I was not welcome and had to shift to eating with the Engineers!
If you do not work on important problems then it is obvious you have little chance of doing important things.
For example, working with one’s door closed lets you get more work done per year than if you had an open door, but I have observed repeatedly later those with the closed doors, while working just as hard as others, seem to work on slightly the wrong problems, while those who have let their door stay open get less work done but tend to work on the right problems! I cannot prove the cause and effect relationship, I only observed the correlation. I suspect the open mind leads to the open door, and the open door tends to lead to the open mind; they reinforce each other.
All these stories show the conditions you tend to want are seldom the best ones for you—the interaction with harsh reality tends to push you into significant discoveries which otherwise you would never have thought about while doing pure research in a vacuum of your private interests.
But be careful—the race is not to the one who works hardest! You need to work on the right problem at the right time and in the right way—what I have been calling “style”. At the urging of others, for some years I set aside Friday afternoons for “great thoughts”.
Most great people also have 10 to 20 problems they regard as basic and of great importance, and which they currently do not know how to solve. They keep them in their mind, hoping to get a clue as to how to solve them. When a clue does appear they generally drop other things and get to work immediately on the important problem. Therefore they tend to come in first, and the others who come in later are soon forgotten. I must warn you however, the importance of the result is not the measure of the importance of the problem.
You do not hire a plumber to learn plumbing while trying to fix your trouble, you expect he is already an expert. Similarly, only when you developed your abilities will you generally get the freedom to practice your expertise, whatever you choose to make it, including the expertise of “universality” as I did.