Let me summarize. You've got to work on important problems. I deny that it is all luck, but I admit there is a fair element of luck. I subscribe to Pasteur's ``Luck favors the prepared mind.'' I favor heavily what I did. Friday afternoons for years - great thoughts only - means that I committed 10% of my time trying to understand the bigger problem... See more

After leaving the cafeteria, Feynman found himself reminiscing about how he’d seen the world as a teenager. When he was in high school, the things that had most fascinated him about the world had seemed mundane to others. He would see water growing narrower the further it got from the tap and wonder if he could figure out what determined that curve

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Distinguish big problems from small ones.