[btrettel]

Perhaps it would be best to avoid the more popular answers to this question in one's own career, depending on your goals.

My own strategy is to intentionally target areas that have been neglected for no good reason. While there are plenty of smart people in my field (fluid dynamics), I feel that if the field had a wider reputation, even more smart people would join, and the number of opportunities I have would shrink. Marketing folks seem to call this the "blue ocean strategy".

So what can you learn from how smart people behave? It would be better to try to distill rational principles from their behavior rather than saying choice X is optimal. For example, ask why choice X is optimal rather than just believing choice X is optimal.