Don’t Follow Your Dreams, Follow Your Tools

PhD

Though the title says “Selecting PhD students”, the advice is more general and can be broadly applied to being a good researcher.

Be optimistic. Even if you are given a fuzzy problem statement, you should try to solve it, if not solvable in current form - try to reformulate it in a way that is solvable. Tweaking the problem statement is a very important skill to have.
Be independent and curious, but don’t shy away from asking for help. It looks as an individual sport but is not and requires a lot of collaboration and help from others.
Be engaging and talk with others.