Finding math research problems What is an efficient strategy to find fruitful research problems. So far the best advice I have heard about choosing a problem is to "talk to as many people as possible and go to as many talks as possible and when you find yourself engaged in something that interests you, then work on that." I forget who said this but its on the internet somewhere.
But I don't have many people to talk to or many talks to go to so how can I efficiently find problems. Any advice?
 A: One possibility is to look what gets published at arXiv.org. Skim the abstracts to get an overview and if something interests you, you can find more on that topic.
A: I think that part of this question answers itself when you get "into" a field. When I was writing my MSc. dissertation I really had no idea what I was interested in, but my supervisor pointed me in a few directions and I ended up working in the one I found most interesting. Then, as you read more and more papers and see the most recent research you find yourself enquiring as to how something was done, or if a certain construction could be altered, or whether it can be applied to a different setting. With the apparent explosion of (higher) category theory into almost area of maths, many open problems can come of the form "does this apply to a general category", or whether certain categorical results can be applied.
I am also in grad school, and I've found that the more talks / conferences you can attend the better. From listening to other people's research areas, you can take hints or maybe find a method / area of maths that you can apply to something you find interesting, to hopefully find a new research area / problem.
