[00:00.00]Then how will you find that balance? First, the experience helps. When you have read a lot and done a lot of research, you learn to recognize what problems are too easy and what problems are too hard. Another way of looking at this is that you need to find the optimum balance between difficulty and likely payoff. You want to choose a problem that you can solve, but if you choose a problem that clearly has a simple solution, then your solution will be unimpressive and the payoff will be low. There is an optimum point on this difficulty and payoff curve. Choose a problem that has a moderate level of difficulty so that the likely payoff is optimized. The second aspect is to balance persistence and flexibility. Successful research requires hard work. It can make up for your lack of skills in many areas. Part of hard work is persistence. Thomas Edison tried 10,000 different designs for the light bulb before he found one that worked well. He wrote, “ The electric light bulb has caused me the greatest amount of study and has required the most elaborate experiments.” The same will hold true for you in your research. You may spend months trying to solve a problem. Finally your efforts will pay off and you will experience a moment when you will suddenly understand the problem that you’ve been studying for so long, a moment when you will suddenly achieve success in your experiment. On the other hand, you also need to know when to give up, or rather, when to change your approach. This is flexibility. Then how do you judge this? One guideline might be to recognize your natural tendency and make a conscious effort to resist it. For example, your natural tendency is stubbornness. If you recognize this tendency in yourself, then make a conscious effort to move on to the next problem when you find yourself spinning your wheels. difficulty flexibility natural tendency