Misjudging the nature of the task

From The Principle of the Hiding Hand by Albert O. Hirschman.

We may be dealing here with a general principle of action.

Creativity always comes as a surprise to us; therefore we can never count on it and we dare not believe in it until it has happened. In other words, we would not consciously engage upon tasks whose success clearly requires that creativity be forthcoming. Hence, the only way in which we can bring our creative resources fully into play is by misjudging the nature of the task, by presenting it to ourselves as more routine, simple, undemanding of genuine creativity than it will turn out to be.

Or, put differently: since we necessarily underestimate our creativity it is desirable that we underestimate to a roughly similar extent the difficulties of the tasks we face, so as to be tricked by these two offsetting underestimates into undertaking tasks which we can, but otherwise would not dare, tackle. The principle is important enough to deserve a name: since we are apparently on the trail here of some sort of Invisible or Hidden Hand, that beneficially hides difficulties from us, I propose "The Hiding Hand."

What this principle suggests is that, far from seeking out and taking up challenges, people are apt to take on and plunge into new tasks because of the erroneously presumed absence of a challenge - because the task looks easier and more manageable than it will turn out to be. As a result, the Hiding Hand can help accelerate the rate at which men engage successfully in problem-solving: they take up problems they think they can solve, find them more difficult expected, but then, being stuck with them, attack willy-nilly the unexpected difficulties - and sometimes even succeed. People who have stumbled through the experience just described will of course tend to retell it as though they had known the difficulties all along and have bravely gone to meet them - fare bella figura is a strong human propensity.

I think the described dynamic is correct but that it is not universal but particular. We frequently do undertake a course of action not knowing how we will accomplish the end, only knowing that the end must be accomplished. In the course of achieving the desired end, it is inevitable that we do find new creativity. And that leads to the common but not uniform experience described by Hirschman, the Hiding Hand. In other words, my main contention is that we don't "necessarily underestimate our creativity" - sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. But the larger truth that necessity is the mother of invention (just not the only mother) remains true.