Conserve your best thinking for emergency use only? (Something about that seems wrong, even though the systematic logic of leaving a tolerance for error is sound.)
No, no. Conserve cleverness for emergencies. Logical consistency is the best policy: most of the time, you should trudge along, applying existing solutions (2 wheel drive). The only time you should be clever and try to do something innovative is when your traditional models fail you. (4 wheel drive).