A problem he has had before

A bookseller near Cairo University has the same bad stretch every year. The students go home for the summer, the stall goes quiet, and he waits it out by cutting prices on the same pile of books and hoping.

It is not working, and he knows it is not working, because it has not worked for years.

Most of what we call problems are not new. They are return visits from something we have met before, and they come in a few kinds. If the usual response fixes it, it was never really a problem, only a task. If nothing can be done and the only way is through, it is not a problem either. It is a condition, like the weather, and the work is to endure it well.

But if the old answer keeps failing and the thing keeps coming back, it is a real problem, and the hard part is not cleverness. It is the decision to stop doing what you already know does not work. He could open on the evenings the summer courses run. He could sell to the students' younger siblings instead of the students. The particular answer matters less than the willingness to let go of the old one.

A genuinely new problem is different. This year the street is being dug up and the stall has to move. There is no habit to break here. What he needs is a clear look: what has changed, what is fixed, what he still has to work with. The regulars, the stock, twenty years of knowing what students want.

Then he can get to work. Which, if he is honest, is the part of the job he has always liked best.