Lateral thinking

• The plan is to make the hole deeper, rather than longer or wider, as with a ditch.
• Ten men have just as much room to move around and shovel in (without getting in the way of other men) as two men do.
• Each of the ten men will work just as hard as the two men will—generally, the more people you have working on a project, the more each person will assume he can slack off.

• How long would it take to dig half a hole?
  • You can't dig half a hole.

• If one egg takes three minutes to boil, how long do two eggs cook?
  • About three minutes (the energy needed to get the eggs to boil is small in comparison to the energy needed to get the surrounding water to boil)

• If a knot in a 5-foot rope takes five minutes to undo, how long would a knot in a 10-foot rope take to undo?
  • Also five minutes (the length of rope usually has nothing to do with the complexity of the knot).

• Creative problem solving

• Edward De Bono, Lateral Thinking : Creativity Step by Step, Harper & Row, 1973, trade paperback, 300 pages, ISBN 0060903252