Alexandersmap

    Tag: jigsaw puzzle

    • Combinations

      “I’m not the best writer, but it is a strength. I might be a 90th percentile writer.
      And I’m not the best marketer, but it is a strength. Again, maybe 90th percentile? I’m better than most, but if you pass 100 people on the street it won’t be hard to find some people better than me.
      What I have gradually learned is that it is not your strengths, but your combination of strengths that sets you apart. It is the fact that writing and marketing are mutually reinforcing—and that I enjoy both—that leads to great results.
      How can you combine your strength? That’s something I would encourage everyone to think about. You will find talented people in every area of life. It’s the combinations that are rare.”
      — James Clear, 3-2-1 Newsletter, 4 July 2024

      We thrive when our unique set of developed skills and natural talents come together at the right place and time for us to leverage them fully. And the rest of the time we’re simply figuring things out. We know when our timing is right, because it all seems to fall into place for us as if by magic. Everything else in our life is incremental growth or gradual decline. It’s up to us to choose daily routines that move us in the right direction even when the timing isn’t right for our unique combinations to thrive in a maddening world.

      I remind my daughter (and myself) to write every day because muscle memory matters. Writing every day helps us find combinations of ideas and words that we otherwise might not have found. We never know when the timing is going to be just right for our combinations, only that we must be ready to seize the moment when it arrives. When you’re young if feels like you can push off the writing for tomorrow when the muse isn’t whispering in your ear today, but it doesn’t work like that. The cruelest twist in our creative life is that it’s got a timer. We must therefore use the time we have as best we can.

      “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” — Chinese Proverb

      Most of us will go through our lives doing work that is good enough to get by but never really takes off. Perhaps the answer isn’t in the work but that we’ve put the puzzle together incorrectly. Most jigsaw puzzles have pieces that seem to fit in one place but on further review aren’t where they’re supposed to be. Once we finally see that and move those pieces to where they belong we may finally solve the puzzle. And so it is with our own combinations of skills and talents. We know when they’re not being used in the right place. Still, we must use them until we find the right combination.

      The way to unlock the puzzle is to take stock of our strengths and begin to try new combinations, that we may find the ones that work. To be forever locked up in our untapped potential is no way to go through life. Like that jigsaw puzzle, stubbornly holding on to things that clearly aren’t working will leave us with an unfinished project or worse, an unfulfilled life.

      The thing to remember about puzzles is that they’re meant to be solved. Unlike jigsaw puzzles, we humans are forever making new pieces of our identity that may be just the right combination we were looking for. So it is that we must continue to develop new experiences and skills that may be applied to our life’s work. There’s a time and place for everything. Just keep working on those combinations.

    • That’s Puzzling

      That’s Puzzling

      Before everyone stared at their phones or television all day, people read books and played board games, cards or other activities that occupied and expanded their minds in leisure time.  And jigsaw puzzles were a notable preoccupation for people with a little time on their hands as well.  Originally created in 1767 in England from maps glued to wood and then cut into pieces, jigsaw puzzles exploded in popularity about 110 years ago when Parker Brothers of Salem and later Beverly, Massachusetts created something close to the modern puzzles we do today.

      Puzzles usually aren’t made of wood on a jigsaw anymore, though you can still find them that way.  Today’s puzzles are cardboard with a printed picture broken into a thousand or more laser cut pieces.  Puzzles aren’t something you do when you have a few minutes on a lunch break or while you’re on a plane traveling to a business meeting.  Jigsaw puzzles are a time commitment and a zen-like exercise in focus.  You can wile away hours on a puzzle, but it’s time well-spent.  Building a puzzle takes your mind off everyday stressors, lowers your heart rate and sharpens your mind as you work to accomplish the specific task of finding that needle in a haystack.

      Puzzles are best done in a group, making it a team-building exercise and social experience.  To complete a puzzle is akin to finishing a great book – you feel the sense of accomplishment while mourning the end of the ride.  During the Depression in the 1930’s puzzles became a very popular way to spend your time as it gave the participants a much needed sense of accomplishment in otherwise difficult times.  I tend to do puzzles in one place only – on the coffee table on the Cape when I’m having some down time.  It’s become a tradition to finish at least one puzzle during a vacation there, and hopefully a couple more than that.

      While puzzles seem daunting and endless at the beginning when you’re forming the border, completing it accelerates as you get closer to the end, with fewer and fewer pieces to sift through to find the one you need.  It’s an exciting time in the cycle of the jigsaw puzzle, and keeps you coming back for more, even as you stretch out the kinks from bending over a table for hours on end.  The end of the puzzle is always on your mind, but you enjoy the ride while you’re on it.

      The worst thing that can happen with a puzzle is that you get to the end and there’s one piece missing.  That seems to happen more often than it should.  The second worst thing that can happen is that you walk away from the puzzle and someone else finishes it while you’re gone.  All that build-up without the finale.  Which is another reason to keep pressing ahead with the puzzle, piece-by-piece to finish what you invested so much time in.  And when you finally reach the last piece, there’s a celebration and sometimes a picture of the finished product.  Depending on the affection developed for the puzzle over the time building it you may leave it assembled for a period of time, but inevitably the call of another puzzle overtakes you and your hours of work are swept off the table back into the box.  Just a memory, but one you’ll think of fondly.