80/15/5. Spend 80% of your time on low-risk/reasonable-payoff work. Spend 15% of your time on related high-risk/high-payoff work. Spend 5% of your time on things that tickle you, regardless of payoff. Teach the next generation to do your 80% job. By the time someone is ready to take over, one of your 15% experiments (or, less frequently, one of your 5% experiments) will have paid off and will become your new 80%. Repeat.

Take these two statements:“I see what you're saying, but in my experience, the other way has worked best.”“In my experience, the other way has worked best, but I see what you're saying.”The first one negates “I see what you’re saying.”The second one negates “In my experience, the other way has worked best.”When you use “but”, it’s important to understand which part you are negating.

At one point, Eno had to earn money as paste-up assistant for the advertisement section of a local paper for three months. He quit and became an electronics dealer by buying old speakers and making new cabinets for them before selling them to friends.[12]

A commonplace book is what a provident poet cannot subsist without, for this proverbial, reason, that "great wits have short memories;" and whereas, on the other hand, poets, being liars by profession, ought to have good memories; to reconcile these, a book of this sort, is in the nature of a supplemental memory, or a record of what occurs remarkable in every day's reading or conversation. There you enter not only your own original thoughts, (which, a hundred to one, are few and insignificant) but such of other men, as you think fit to make your own, by entering them there. For, take this for a rule, when an author is in your books, you have the same demand upon him for his wit, as a merchant has for your money, when you are in his. By these few and easy prescriptions, (with the help of a good genius) it is possible you may, in a short time, arrive at the accomplishments of a poet, and shine in that character[3].

you should never save for two meetingswhat you can accomplish in one.

A recent book that advocates for this idea is Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized world by David Epstein. Consider reading Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You along side it: So Good They Can’t Ignore You focuses on building up “career capital,” which is important for everyone but especially people with a lot of different interests.1 People interested in interdisciplinary work (including students graduating from liberal arts or other general programs) might seem “behind” at first, but with time to develop career capital these graduates can outpace their more specialist peers.

I can give the following advice: be a multiplier! I've seen many talented senior engineers who were very productive on their own but failed to help others to grow.

Listerine, for example, started life on the shelf as an antiseptic, sold as both floor cleaner and a treatment for gonorrhoea. But it wasn't a runaway success until it was marketed as a treatment for bad breath. 

But many ideas are destined for improvement

There are many people with good ideas who don't have the means, the will, or the courage to action them. Similarly, there are very talented business people who have no ideas, but are brilliant at the execution.