Read outside your lane. Some of the best ideas come from stuff you weren’t supposed to be into.

Ideas travel badly inside a single subject and surprisingly well between them. A problem that looks new in your field has often been solved in different vocabulary somewhere else, which is why people who read sideways seem to arrive with answers nobody expected. Being unqualified for a topic is not a reason to stay out of it.

Pick something next week with no connection to your classes or your shifts. A book about bridges, a channel about ceramics, whatever catches you. Read it for its own sake and let the overlap find you later.