Let's train our ability to think differently by doing some gardening :-)
Let's try to move beyond thinking that follows standard patterns.
Here is the equidistant trees exercise:
You are an established, visionary landscape designer and are tasked with placing 4 trees so that they are all at the same distance from one another.
How do you plant the trees?
I know that after 3 minutes you are curious to find out how it is done, but I suggest making a little effort: it is all good for your brain!
The solution is not to put all the trees on a single plane: place 3 at the vertices of an equilateral triangle, around the sides of a small hill, and put the fourth at the top, above the centre of the triangle, at a height that forms a regular tetrahedron.
An alternative, less romantic solution is to reverse the vertical arrangement: create a hollow, with the 3 trees around its slopes and the fourth at the bottom. In practice, we turn the tetrahedron upside down.
We could say that in this case, we need a little vertical rather than lateral thinking 😊
Standard approaches are very useful for handling many tasks quickly, but can become an obstacle when we need to come up with something different.
