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Have you ever seen the puzzle of 9 dots, and then someone asks you to connect them with 4 lines without lifting the pen from the paper?
If you are not that good at puzzles (and I am not) you need to step back and look outside of your mental model of how things work in the world.
The dots are placed in threes, in three rows totaling nine dots.
Now if you try to stay inside the dots, it is impossible to do unless you fold the paper over and draw a line through two lines of dots.
So there is more than one way to solve the puzzle, but that is true of almost all situations. There is more than one way to solve problems.
Do you have a problem that needs solving?
Perhaps you need to look at the problem in several different lights, to see the possible answers.
When Thomas Edison found problems that he couldn’t solve he took naps, thinking that the change from looking at the problem to letting his subconscious work would help him find a solution.
Now if you are at work and you tell the boss you’re going to lie down and take a nap to solve a problem, that could be a problem in and of itself. But if you go home at night, think about the problem before you go to sleep, you might find the answer comes to you in the night. It works for me, and I have a pen and notepad beside my bed so if an idea hits me I can write it down. And then I fall back to sleep. And you know what? I sleep very soundly after I write an idea down that comes to me in the night, because I know I won’t forget it.
Typically I am a one-problem sleeper. I don’t think I have ever solved two problems in one night.
And if the nine-dot problem has you awake, you can find the answer. Have a fruitful sleep.
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