Don’t prematurely obsess on a single “big problem” or “big theory”
It's ok to try tackling a big problem, as long as you know when pause for a while and come back to it later.<p>What if Ramanujan had been told by Hardy to stay home and stop working on big things that he hadn't had sufficient experience in? While there will ever only be one Ramanujan, he wouldn't have developed into what he did had he restricted himself. He made a lot of mistakes, and that didn't kill his career nor did it stop him from producing many great works.<p>Similarly, Bezos obsessed about a simple online bookstore website. Jobs obsessed over details for a small number of devices. Torvalds obsessed over an operating system he wrote. DHH obsessed over a web application framework open source project for his company. If you obsess over something, it has a much better chance for success.<p>If you believe in it, and you see a path to it, don't give up.