I think avoiding contraproductive behavior is a good guiding principle but it may be hard to determine. Sometimes one has to move out of a local maximum to find a better one but the heuristic may not always work--I cannot tell if there is water over the next hill until I make the journey.

[W]e should really look upon this author's [Samuel Jackson Pratt's] departure from the world of literature as a good riddance of bad rubbish; …]

Stoves with two or more potholes The normal single-pot stove in which the pot sits on top, rather than being sunk into the pothole, has a major limitation.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are a double act engaged to spy on Hamlet, with the result that he has at each ear a hearer.