A policeman is walking his beat late one night when he comes across a man on his hands and knees, crawling around the base of a single, bright streetlight.

The man is clearly intoxicated and he's sweeping his hands frantically over the small circle of illuminated pavement.
"What's wrong?" the policeman asks. "What have you lost?"

"I've lost my house keys," the drunk man slurs, not looking up. "I've been searching for an hour."

The policeman, a kind-hearted type, sighs and gets down on his own hands and knees to help.

After ten minutes of searching the same small patch of ground, he's frustrated. The keys are nowhere to be found.

"Are you absolutely sure you lost them right here?" the policeman asks.

The drunk man shakes his head and points vaguely into the darkness.

"No," he says. "I lost them in the park. But this... this is where the light is."

I love this story because it’s one of the most powerful metaphors I’ve ever come across for a cognitive trap we all fall into.

It’s known as The Drunkard's Search, or the Streetlight Effect.

It’s our deep, human tendency to look for answers where it’s easiest to look, not where they are most likely to be.

We are all, in some way, the drunkard. We are all biased toward the light, because searching in the dark is hard, scary, and uncomfortable.

A company wants to know why sales are down, so they send a satisfaction survey to their existing customers.

Why? Because that data is easy to get. They don't go out and interview the people who aren't buying from them, because that's the dark, expensive "park."

We measure our "productivity" by the number of emails we've sent or the small tasks we've crossed off our to-do list.

Why? Because that's the illuminated, measurable data. The real work, the difficult, strategic thinking that has no "metric" is left undone in the darkness.

We judge our success by the things we can easily count, the number on a scale, the likes on a post, the money in an account.

We do this even when we know the things that actually matter (like peace of mind, kindness, or intellectual growth) are in the park, lost to the darkness, impossible to quantify.

The next time you’re stuck on a difficult problem, ask yourself this one,

Am I looking for the answer, or am I just looking where the light is?

Am I just looking at the data that’s easy to get? Am I just talking to the people who are easy to talk to?

Am I just clinging to the solution that is comfortable, well-lit, and familiar?

Sometimes, the keys really are under the streetlight. But more often than not, they're in the park.

When was the last time you caught yourself looking "where the light is"? Let me know in the comments