I kind of took the logic from the opposite direction when I was thinking about this not long ago. I was asking how I could view my education as a way to serve others and to make a meaningful contribution towards the betterment of the human condition. But my dilemma was... if there was any truth to this view, why is competition so heavy to do it? Can I really justify a service attitude if I climbed over people to perform that service? Scientific work is not lacking for people to do it, it seems, so assuming I would make a unique contribution that would not be made by someone else is, to be honest, conceited in most cases. And wanting to have my name attached to a contribution that would have eventually been made by someone else anyway had I never pursued further education, is narcissistic.
But that's just my observations that were meant for my own situation, not necessarily to your point. This speaks nothing to just wanting to be an academic for one's own lifestyle choice. Towards your point, the best advice that I followed accidentally is from E. O. Wilson, "run away from the sound of the guns". I applied for a masters in a degree that didn't seem very competitive, there were only 8 of us whereas other degrees in my same department had closer to 20, and I didn't feel particularly qualified because my bachelor's was in a very different area, so I suspect they just let in everyone who applied. Then, whereas the other students in my degree did their dissertations on the standard topics of evolutionary anthropology (primate behavior, hominid fossil morphometrics, etc.), I did mine in a much more "fringe" field - patterns of evolutionary theory in literature/folklore, to sharpen the analogy between cultural and biological evolution. So now, even though my project was very simple and tenuous (in my opinion), my supervisor is confident that I can publish it, just for the simple fact alone that it hasn't been done before and I can demonstrate a methodology.
So, if my experience is of any use, try to work in the fringe areas of your field if you can.
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