One common trap for smart people is “I want to do something important”. In reality, most world changing things happen not because we planned and anticipated them but because our passionate efforts in seemingly unimportant projects evolved to make those projects important. Nothing I have done in life was started with the aim “I want to change the world”. I have spent a lot of time in obscure projects out of personal passion - and I never worried if those will lead to fame or fortune, only worried if we could pay the bills.
Over time many personal “scratch the itch” projects evolved to become something important but that wasn’t the goal. Setting huge goals on exploratory R and D projects would put too large a burden on them. We have to let our curiosity and passion guide us in such projects.