List out your favorite problems. Everything you learn, you can think ‘how does this apply to my problems?’
You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although but and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, Test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say “How did he do it? He Most be a genius!”