In my first year of graduate school, I was wondering "HOW can I do something creative?" It seemed an impossible problem. How do you come up with something which would startle you with its newness if somebody else showed it to you as something they came up with?

The solution I hit upon which moved me forward was this: research problems are homework problems. You could give me a homework problem I had never solved before, and I would work diligently on it. I was not deterred by the fact that I had never answered this homework problem before because I knew SOMEBODY had answered this homework problem before.

A Research Problem was just a Homework Problem asked for the first time. BEFORE the first person to do it had ever done it. With this attitude, I was able to work on a problem with the artificial belief that OF COURSE it could be done, and so I should stick to it until I had done it. The belief was artificial because, in the case of a research problem, it had NOT been done before.

Once I got used to working on research problems it was totally better than homework. No longer was I interested in homework, but only in these incredible investigations that hadn't been done before.

I should add that I wouldn't have even vaguely understood the questions if I wasn't on a daily basis exposed to great research.