Research as Finding a Path Through a Graph
I can view the space of possible options as a graph, and research aimed at solving a problem as finding a path through that graph.
At any given time, there is a set of visited vertices. Following either the WFS or DFS algorithm, I can choose the next vertex to visit, which is the next question to explore.
Breadth-first search performs better in terms of speed and number of steps.
But people, including me, still prefer depth-first search because it feels more natural.
This observation is counterintuitive, but it is supported by graph theory. So I need to stop myself whenever I want to go deeper instead of broader.