Polya's little "How to solve it" booklet has great advice. It's great because it's addressed to math classes but based on the practices of a research mathemati

Polya's little "How to solve it" booklet has great advice. It's great because it's addressed to math classes but based on the practices of a research mathematician. So it's not just solving the problems in the book, it's also about solving new unsolved problems. It's specific to math, but really useful for so many other questions. There is much more to the book but one of my favorite parts is the Heuristics and their simple explanations. Wikipedia has a good table of them Analogy Can you find a problem analogous to your problem and solve that? Generalization Can you find a problem more general than your problem? Induction Can you solve your problem by deriving a generalization from some examples? Specialization Can you find a problem more specialized? Draw a Figure Can you draw a picture of the problem? ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Solve_It https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Solve_It The calm, deliberate attitude of the book is infectious, it's great for getting unstuck from tough problems. So do read the book itself in addition to the wikipedia article.