One advise I'll never forget (from an interview with late mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani) is that you don't have to race faster than everyone else (although if you can, that's great!). You can just run in a direction no one is running toward (and hopefully be persistent). Then you're only racing yourself and speed is largely irrelevant.

I myself know I'm very slow, specially developing projects. So I don't try to race anyone, except contribute to things I know are neglected. There are so many neglected problems, you don't need to work on the most coveted fields.