Accepting that I have to read a paper two or three times before I really understand it has been the biggest breakthrough I've had. Usually this is because I ju

Accepting that I have to read a paper two or three times before I really understand it has been the biggest breakthrough I've had. Usually this is because I just didn't have the background to understand the paper until I read it, but academic papers can be pretty poorly written. For example, a recent paper hinged upon something that I considered physically impossible - only in the last paragraph did it explain why it wasn't (they were even like "everyone is probably assuming this is impossible - here's why it's not". I really wish that had led with that as it was an overwhelmingly convincing argument.