8 "When the problem is solved, that thought will be a wasted motion in retrospect." (I first enunciated this as an explicit general principle when explaining to Marcello why e.g. one doesn't worry about people who have failed to solve a problem previously. When you actually solve the problem, those thoughts will predictably not have contributed anything in retrospect. So if your goal is to solve the problem, you should focus on the object-level problem, instead of worrying about whether you have sufficient status to solve it. The same rule applies to many other habitual worries, or reasoning effort expended to reassure against them, that would predictably appear as wasted motion in retrospect, after actually solving the problem.)

Of course when you're on your deathbed, alone (save the cryonics team at your side), unknown, with no significant accomplishments to your name clinging to the slim hope of revivification a hundred years hence and you've spent every last dollar and ounce of energy on solving a problem you're just not smart enough to understand you're really gonna wish you had second guessed yourself back in the day.

... But hey, I'm an optimist.

Edit: Yikes people. I was joking. Sorry.