The problem with this kind of advice is that it's not really actionable. It's only useful in retrospect. If you are able to recognize these situations/opportun

The problem with this kind of advice is that it's not really actionable. It's only useful in retrospect. If you are able to recognize these situations/opportunities, then everyone else would be able to recognize them too. It's not like my brain is all that different from those around me, after all. You might as well tell me that the secret to flying is learning how to throw myself at the ground and miss. Hard problems are usually hard problems for a reason, and when you spend time on them you often go nowhere. Maybe better advice (that is actually actionable) would be something like this: "Try to tackle hard problems that nobody else wants to tackle during 20% of your time, on the odd chance that you might stumble upon an easy solution and get big rewards from it." Sort of like diversifying your stock portfolio. Keep some of your eggs in the nice stable investments with low returns, but maybe invest some allocated percentage on some riskier long shots too.