The day after President Kennedy challenged America to land a man on the moon,
… the National Space Agency didn’t suit up an astronaut. Instead their first goal was to hit the moon — literally. And just over three years later, NASA successfully smashed Ranger 7 into the moon … It took fifteen ever-evolving iterations before the July 16, 1969, gentle moon landing …
Great scientists, creative thinkers, and problem solvers do not solve hard problems head-on. When they are faced with a daunting question, they immediately and prudently admit defeat. They realize there is no sense in wasting energy vainly grappling with complexity when, instead, they can productively grapple with smaller cases that will teach them how to deal with the complexity to come.
Some may wonder whether this contradicts my earlier post about how quickly people give up thinking about problems. Doesn’t the quote above say we should “prudently admit defeat”? There’s no contradiction. The quote advocates retreat, not surrender. One way to be able to think about a hard problem for a long time is to find simpler versions of the problem that you can solve. Or first, to find simpler problems that you cannot solve. As George Polya said
If you can’t solve a problem, then there is an easier problem that you can’t solve; find it.
Bracket the original problem between the simplest version of the problem you cannot solve and the fullest version of the problem you can solve. Then try to move your brackets.