James Gosling has a wonderful post today that lots of people could get a lot of value from reading. From the text, James Gosling: on the Java Road: 
" Back when I was a grad student I was spinning out of control trying to come up with a thesis topic. My advisor took me out to lunch one day and asked me a simple question: 'What is a PhD thesis?' I yattered on for a while and he listened patiently. Eventually he said 'No: It's just a stack of 100 pages with 4 signatures on top'. "What do you need to solve? If your goal is to solve the world's problems, identify what the solution looks like and go do the things necessary to archieve that. But most people don't need that at all. I'll use a personal example... my fiancee and I are planning a wedding (the process of removing weeds from ones yard). There seem to be a THOUSAND requirements on the day, but there aren't. There's realistically only one. Get a ring on her finger in a legally binding way. Ok, so that's a bit naive... there are actually two, get a ring on her finger in a legally binding way, and have an unbelievably fun time doing it. That's basically it. Who comes, where they sit, what they eat... those are all incidental. I love this way of thinking.