3 ideas
The scientists who do great work are not smarter, but they deliberately commit time to important problems rather than only solving what lands on their desk. Hamming reserved Friday afternoons for 'great thoughts,' asking what the important problems in his field were and whether he was working on any of them — because if you never work on important problems, you cannot do important work.
People who keep their office door closed get more done day-to-day but tend to work on the wrong problems, while those who keep it open get interrupted yet absorb hints about what matters and what the world needs. The slight loss in immediate productivity is repaid by working on questions that turn out to be important.
Consistently investing a little extra effort each day compounds like interest, so the person who works slightly harder and smarter on the right things pulls far ahead over a career. Knowledge and output grow exponentially when added to incrementally, making sustained marginal investment more powerful than occasional bursts.