“My advice for young researchers at the start of their career is… Work on
your own ideas, not your advisor’s ideas (or at least in addition to
her ideas). And spend more time thinking and less time reading. Too much
reading leads people to think of small variations on existing studies.
Admittedly my strategy of writing the paper first and only then reading
the literature (or, more likely, letting the referees tell me what they
think I should have read) is an extreme one, but it is better than
trying to read everything. Try writing the first paper on some topic,
not the tenth, and never the 50th.”
from Tyler Cowen on Marginal Revolution