I often tell people that the job of a trader is more like a scientist on a path to discover something, because essentially discovery is a process of looking at various combinations and correlations of variables which are otherwise not observable to an untrained eye. Both are looking to discover something, the trader is looking for an “edge” an “idea” and the scientist is looking to find a cause or solve a problem.

So my question was to be a better scientist who makes several breakthroughs, should one focus on generating quality ideas or should we focus on generating many ideas some of which would fail and others may take us a bit closer to what we are looking for.

I came across this interesting article. - https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/why-creativity-is-a-numbers-game/

Which says, if you look at scientists like Edison, and others it seems to be a numbers game. The more your ability to generate ideas (good or bad), the more is the probability of you landing on a good idea.

So ask yourself, how many trading ideas can you generate? Is your mind constantly thinking about new ideas? Are you continuously testing and refining new ideas?