I am Phd student in CS with less than 15 published papers from which none is at a top journal or conference. My typical research routine comprises of reading papers with potentially improvable results that published at journals/conferences that are categorized by certain sites as Q2/A, thinking about alternative solutions to these results for a few days and if I make any progress on discovering alternative improved solutions then I check if there are any newer papers citing the basis paper with similar results, if there aren't I continue investigating for a few weeks after which I usually have some publishable results. The preparation of the paper takes significantly longer and I usually involve one more author in this step. I generally avoid trying to read and improve results published at top journals or conferences mainly for the following reasons:
The papers containing these results tend to require more diverse knowledge in order to be read fluently than results of lesser publication venues.
These results generally receive much attention so they are more likely to have more able people trying to extend or improve them and thus it's more likely for someone else to publish results essentially the same as mine earlier than me
The published papers there tend to have a lot of authors from top institutions which makes it somewhat intimidating for me to try doing further research on their results
Some of the papers there seem to have been written by people who have worked on a very specific area of research for a very long time and thus have developed numerous techniques and advanced intuition which give then significant advantage in these areas.
I would define successful researchers as those who publish, on average, at least 3 papers every 2 years in top conferences or journals. My question is as follows: What are some the research styles of research routines of successful researchers?
