Answering the Functional Fixedness Test

If you have not read the post entitled "Testing Your Functional Fixedness" click here. This post you are reading right now will not make sense until you read the post that is in the link.

Most people who take this test do not think about the box as anything other than something that will hold the thumbtacks. The box ends up being the most important trick to this riddle. In order to keep everything from getting waxy, you pin the box to the cork board and set the candle inside. Perhaps if the list of items had extenuated the box of thumbtacks people may be able to figure it out easier.

Picture found again on David's blog

This is an important lesson though. These solutions seem so easy once we already know it. And some people may already know it after brainstorming for a little while. Not always literally like in this example, but we all have issues thinking outside of the box. Many times it is functional fixedness that is stopping us from getting there. If we could overcome functional fixedness than imagine all the problems, both simple and complex, that we would be able to solve.