With enough practice, people can assess a situation and do the one thing that will transform a situation and allow a move from a state of being stuck to a state where things can evolve.

A story I’ve heard many times is of a workman called to repair the heating system. He takes a thorough look at the system, and touches here and there until he decides to select a hammer. With the hammer, he bangs once on the heating system. When he turns it on, it works, and the heating system starts heating.

When he presents his invoice of 1,000 $ the customer complains that he hasn’t done anything special. The workman has no issues adapting the invoice. The customer now reads 5$ to restart the heating and 995$ to know how.

But that approach isn’t available to everyone.

Sticking to a focus on making it work easily becomes counterproductive. It’s based on the assumption that one knows or must know how to handle the situation. The approach then switches to one where the same process will be repeated over and over again.

Such a repetitive pattern becomes a blind spot to the person. For them, it is always a new variant.