To me, Feynman's example of the plates is something that you do in addition to Adleman/Hamming's advice. Of all the problems to work on, work on those that hav

To me, Feynman's example of the plates is something that you do in addition to Adleman/Hamming's advice. Of all the problems to work on, work on those that have have a reasonable angle of attack (Adleman/Hamming), that you have the ability to solve (Feynman). And in addition, make sure you plant little seeds instead of just working on big problems after you've succeeded (Hamming in 'You and your research'), which amounts to being able to play with spinning plate problems (Feynman)