Eyes-on-the-pie rule No. 1: Start now--the "big idea" will come later

Maybe Madonna was humming "Like a Virgin" in third grade and Steve Jobs had a mental picture of the iPod before he launched Apple. We doubt it. "The most interesting and fascinating aspects of a subject typically reveal themselves only after deep immersion in it," Duckworth says. In other words, if you're trying to think of the brilliant plot twist that will make your novel a bestseller before you write a word, don't. Just get typing.

For proof that inspiration often comes after a lot of perspiration, consider Roxanne Quimby, founder of the organic skin-care company Burt's Bees. As a 35-year-old single mother of two, Quimby started out making beeswax candles in an old one-room schoolhouse with no electricity or running water in the woods of Maine. Ten years after dipping her first wick, a light bulb went on: She'd put the scruffy, bearded face of her beekeeper boyfriend, Burt, on the label. "I realized that using his noncommercial image was the perfect way to stand out from everyone else," she says. Burt's hirsute mug made the brand famous, and the two just sold the company to Clorox for $913 million.

How long should you wait for a flash of brilliance? According to researchers at the Institute for Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education in Berlin, it takes a full decade of practice to master most skills. So if you haven't already been at something for years, don't even think about giving up.