John Adair's 100 Greatest Ideas for Personal Success

Solution to the Nine Dots test

The reason many people cannot solve this problem is that they put an unconscious or invisible framework around the dots, and try to solve the problem within it. That makes it impossible.

But if you break out of that self-imposed limitation, the solution to the problem is easily reached.

The Nine Dots test first appeared in one of my books, Training for Decisions, as long ago as 1969, and since then it has generated a new maxim in the English language – think outside the box. The ‘box’ in question is the unconscious ...