Thinking Outside The Box

You've no doubt heard people use that phrase. "You gotta think outside the box." They explain it, correctly, as a demand that you orient your thinking outside of your pre-conceived limitations.



However, WTF does that have to do with a box?



Well, I'll tell you. Or rather, show you.



In the beginning, there's a thought puzzle, which takes the form of a square of dots, as follows:





The object being to connect the dots using the fewest number of lines, without ever lifting your pencil from the paper. Or, in this case, your Line Tool off the "canvas" in Photoshop.



The conventional wisdom is that 4 lines is the correct solution, as follows:





Notice this solution having been achieved by drawing the lines outside the boundaries of the box itself, thus the term "thinking outside the box," as the box shape does not imply a boundary, yet we tend to think in terms of pre-conceived limitations, and as such wrack our brains ferociously trying to find a solution with less than 5 lines.



Unless you're me. In which case, you can solve it with 3 lines.



See, the "conventional wisdom" is still subject to preconceived limitations itself. If you're thinking outside the box, why think only a little outside the box?



Why not think WAAAAAAAAAAAY outside the box?



Like this:





Now, THAT is thinking outside the box. And now all of you know the solution to that puzzle, and if you ever see this in some meaningless corporate presentation, or as a classroom exercise of some kind, when the teacher tells you "but, see, you can solve it in four lines," you can tell them "it's only a solution if it has the smallest number of possible lines. The smallest number of possible lines is three."



And then demonstrate.