You're Solving Problems the Hard Way (And Your Expertise Is Why)
In 1942, Abraham Luchins gave people a simple water jar puzzle. After solving five problems with the same formula (B - A - 2C), participants faced a new problem where a much simpler solution existed: just A + C.
Almost nobody found the simple solution. The control group — who hadn't practiced the complex formula — solved it instantly.
Your experience became your prison.
The Science of Being Stuck
Three related cognitive phenomena explain why smart, experienced people get trapped:
Functional fixedness (Duncker, 1945): You can't see an object as useful beyond its typical function. In the famous candle problem, only 43% of people figured out they could empty a box of thumbtacks and use the box as a shelf. When the box was presented empty? 100% solved it. The box's "container" function blocked its "shelf" potential.
Einstellung effect (Luchins, 1942): A previously successful method blinds you to better alternatives. Luchins' water jar experiments showed this across hundreds of participants — people mechanically applied complex formulas when dead-simple solutions were staring them in the face.
Mental set: The broader tendency to approach every new problem with yesterday's strategy.
The Numbers Are Striking
Bilalić, McLeod & Gobet (2008, Cognition) studied chess experts facing problems where both a familiar solution and a shorter, better one existed. Using eye-tracking, they discovered something remarkable:
The experts kept looking at squares relevant to their first solution idea — even when they reported they were searching for alternatives.
Performance dropped to 3 standard deviations below their skill level.
Read that again. Chess experts — people who've spent thousands of hours developing problem-solving skills — performed worse than their baseline because a familiar solution presented itself first. They genuinely believed they were exploring alternatives. Their eyes proved they weren't.
Sio, Kotovsky & Cagan (2015) confirmed this in a meta-analysis of 43 studies with 1,229 participants: even design examples meant to inspire systematically induce fixation. The fixation effect occurs even when people are explicitly warned about it.
Stress Makes Everything Worse
Luchins specifically tested how stress affects the Einstellung effect. The finding was consistent: stressful conditions increase the prevalence of the effect.
If you're a solopreneur or small business owner — meaning you're juggling seven roles, chronically under-resourced, and probably haven't had a genuinely relaxed week in months — you're in exactly the conditions where functional fixedness hits hardest.
The vicious cycle:
Overworked → more stressed → more reliant on known methods → known methods are manual and inefficient → more overwork → return to step 1.
Five-Year-Olds Are Immune
German & Defeyter (2000) found that 5-year-olds don't show functional fixedness. They'll happily use a box as a shelf, a shoe as a hammer, or whatever the situation requires. By age 6-7, the effect kicks in.
Functional fixedness is learned, not innate. It develops as we accumulate experience with how objects are "supposed" to work. More experience → stronger fixedness.
This is the expertise paradox: the same knowledge that makes you competent creates the blind spots that trap you.
But There's a Simple Fix
Luchins discovered that when he told experimental participants "Don't be blind," over half of them immediately switched to the simpler solution.
Awareness alone cuts Einstellung by roughly 50%.
Not motivation. Not willpower. Not a 12-week training program. Just someone pointing out: "you're doing this the hard way."
And remember Duncker's candle problem: presenting the box empty — removing the functional association — raised the solution rate from 43% to 100%.
The intervention isn't "try harder." It's "see differently."
What This Means for Your Business
If you're manually answering the same customer questions every week, you're looking at the thumbtacks inside the box.
If you think "customer education" means "write a PDF" or "record a webinar," that's Einstellung — you're applying yesterday's successful format to a problem that has better solutions now.
If you've been doing something the same way for years and it feels inefficient but you can't quite see the alternative, welcome to the Bilalić effect. Your eyes are scanning the familiar squares even while your conscious mind reports it's looking for something new.
The resource-rational reanalysis (Binz et al., 2021) offers a compassionate framing: this isn't stupidity. Your brain is efficiently allocating cognitive resources — it's just allocating them to the wrong problem. The solution that worked last time is the fastest to deploy, and your overloaded brain optimizes for speed.
The fix isn't working harder. It's having someone empty the box for you — present the problem without the assumptions you've accumulated.
Sometimes the most useful thing anyone can say is: "Don't be blind."
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Sources: Luchins (1942) Psychological Monographs; Duncker (1945) On Problem-Solving; Bilalić, McLeod & Gobet (2008) Cognition; Sio, Kotovsky & Cagan (2015) Design Studies; German & Defeyter (2000) Psychonomic Bulletin & Review; Binz et al. (2021) HCAI Munich.