Fifty years," I hackneyed, "is a long time." "Not when you're looking back at them," she said. "You wonder how they vanished so quickly. - Isaac Asimov

They're not bad fellows, Lee, when they stick to their Encyclopedia – and we'll see that that's where they stick in the future. They're hopelessly incompetent when it comes to ruling Terminus. Go away now and start things rolling. I want to be alone.

In three centuries the Foundation had grown from a private project of a small group of scientists to a tentacular trade empire sprawling deep into the Galaxy and half a year had flung it from its heights to the status of another conquered province.

I have always found in my own work — quite different from yours, of course, but possibly we may generalize — that zeroing in tightly on a particular problem is self-defeating. Why not relax and talk about something else, and your unconscious mind — not laboring under the weight of concentrated thought — may solve the problem for you.