Switch back and forth between trying and reviewing. Often it can be good to just try before reviewing, to get your feet wet. Don't spend too much time. Then when reviewing you're going to understand it more. Repeat this process.

But there's some things to remember that are incredibly important

  - a paper doesn't *prove* something, it suggests it is *probably* right
    - under the conditions of the paper's settings, which aren't yours
  - just because someone had X outcome before doesn't mean you won't get Y outcome
  - those small details usually dominate success
    - sometimes a one liner seemingly throw away sentence is what you're missing
    - sometimes the authors don't know and the answer is 5 papers back that they've been building on
  - DO NOT TREAT PAPERS AS *ABSOLUTE* TRUTH
    - no one is *absolutely* right, everyone is *some* degree of wrong
  - other researchers are just like you, writing papers just like you
    - they also look back at their old papers and say "I'm glad I'm not that bad anymore"
  - a paper demonstrating your idea is a positive signal, you're thinking in the right direction

As soon as you start treating papers as "this is fact" you tend to overly generalize the results. But the details dominate so you just kill your own creativity. You kill your own ideas before you know they're right or wrong. More importantly you don't know how right or how wrong.