They key is to work very, very hard at solving the problem before sleeping. It's insufficient to just read the problem, or tinker around with it a little. How

They key is to work very, very hard at solving the problem before sleeping. It's insufficient to just read the problem, or tinker around with it a little. However it also doesn't work to beat at the problem so hard that I stay up all night without sleeping. I'm afraid that I didn't clue into this until _graduate_ school. As an undergrad I quite commonly didn't start my problem sets until the night before they were due.