There have been times when I was working on some problem and I was shrugging of a certain part of the problem saying I don’t have time to fix that and then proceeded with some workaround for that instance, and the problem re-occurred in a different instance and I did the same again, and it repeated quite a few times. And then, when I eventually figured out the mechanics of the thing, I was like it wasn’t that difficult actually, I should have learnt it earlier.

But there’s an underlying logic for this avoiding figuring-out-problem-from-first-principles behavior. The brain does this to avoid spending cognitive energy on very second problem you see, but only on problems that are recurring. However, the problem here, is that the internal tally for how frequently recurring a problem to figure it out should not be 10 or something; 2 is just a fine enough number, and if you’re really lazy, then 3.