Excellent set of advice on how to answer hard problems.
Tips and Tricks for Answering Hard Questions
I've collected some tips and tricks for answering hard questions, some of which may be original, and others I may have read somewhere and forgotten the source of. Please feel free to contribute more tips and tricks, or additional links to the sources or fuller explanations.
Liked the advice below, problem is that I can’t adhere to it. I just begin to obsess on the problem and can’t go to sleep. I really need more discipline!
Sleep on it. I find that I tend to have a greater than average number of insights in the period of time just after I wake up and before I get out of bed. Our brains seem to continue to work while we’re asleep, and it may help to prime it by reviewing the problem before going to sleep.
via Less Wrong: Tips and Tricks for Answering Hard Questions.