When you’re driving and you have trouble in a turn, usually it’s how you entered the turn in the first place that’s the cause of the problem. When you’re in school and you’re struggling in a class, usually it’s what you did before the class itself that’s the cause of the problem. When you’re on a long flight of stairs and you can’t catch your breath, usually it’s what you did in the years before that’s the cause of the problem.

Each of these is an example, with progressively longer time frames, of the same phenomenon: A problem whose solution best lies within an early stage of a process is often made manifest at a later stage of that process.

Understandably, most people don’t like this fact very much. (The longer the time frame in question, the more they don’t like it.) Naturally, they don’t like it in the moment of discovering the problem. Nobody likes hearing that it’s too late to fix something. Nobody enjoys the sinking sensation that comes from paying the price for a mistake made