Definitely agree with this one.

The hard way to be outstanding is to go after a niche and learn your way into the 20% of that field (did some copy paste here, lazy to repeat arguments).

For example, if you want to be proficient in radar systems you can learn and read all the books on radar, and probably still become an average research student of radar technology.

If you can find a hard problem in radar and solve it somehow, you will become well-known in an established field without becoming a classical expert like writing book on radar.