There is a principle in medicine, borrowed from philosophy, that when possible, you should strive to come up with the simplest possible explanation for the phenomena you observe. In medicine, that means we try to find a single diagnosis to explain all that we see in a patient.
Occam’s razor, it’s called—the art of shaving the diagnosis down to the simplest, most elegant solution. It is one of the great pleasures of medicine, but in this case, it wasn’t going to be easy.
Here’s why: The patient had a fever, low blood pressure, and an elevated white-blood-cell count. That combination meant infection until proved otherwise. But if this were an infection, how did the rash fit in? And what about her failing kidneys?

— Diagnosis, by Lisa Sanders

Misfortune is needed to bring to light the treasures of the human intellect. Compression is needed to explode gunpowder. Captivity has brought my mental faculties to a focus; and you are well aware that from the collision of clouds electricity is produced — from electricity, lightning, from lightning, illumination.


(The Count of Monte Cristo)

From a personal experience, the worst times in my life, productivity-wise, are the holidays. Especially the too long and the too short ones.

السنة اللي درسناها الكتروني جانت من صدك سنة ضايعة، لأن ماكو أي نظام أو هيكلية للوقت مالتك... لا أكو دوام، ولا أكو شروق وغروب (لأن انت مكضيها بالبيت). كل ساعة تشبه الثانية، وكلهن يفقدن أهميتهن. وشعور "مرور الوقت" هم ينفقد، يمكن إلا بوقت النوم لأن تدرك أنّ اليوم انتهى.
الواحد يفترض أنّ لو عنده وقت فراغ لمدة أشهر كاملة متواصلة، رح يسوي كل اللي يعجبه، بس بالواقع ما رح يسوي أي شي.

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In psychology, there's something called the broken-leg problem. A statistical formula may be highly successful in predicting whether or not a person will go to a movie in the next week. But someone who knows that this person is laid up with a broken leg will beat the formula. No formula can take into account the infinite range of such exceptional events.

— Atul Gawande