“Clue” comes from an old word for a ball of thread. Every answer starts as something you follow, not something you find.

Answers behave more like threads than like objects. You rarely find a whole one lying there, ready to be picked up. You catch an end, follow it, lose it, pick it up further along, and the following is most of the work. People who seem to arrive at answers quickly are usually just further along a thread they started pulling earlier.

Stop looking for the complete answer to whatever you are stuck on. Find one loose end instead, a person to ask, a single page to read, one practice problem, and pull it this week. The next end shows up once you move.