A set of good heuristics ( rules of thumb that work about 80% of the time) probably gets you more mileage than exhaustive, efficiency-obsessed strategies. You spend less time in the static planning/deliberating stage and more time in the doing/learning/iterating stage.
But heuristics tend to be domain-specific. They generally apply to narrow sets of cases/circumstances. So heuristics can become destructive if they wander outside their proper domains.
I think this is an example of a commonly-used heuristic that is destructive: “There are only two types of people in the world: winners and losers.”
ammar mian 