Bit by Bit,
Putting it Together
I had a great insight during Snowmaggeddon last week. No one should be able to run for President of the United States without first showing that they can put a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle together. They can have four days to do it (I did it in two and a half) and we will feed them. (I am not a monster.) Neverthe-
less, they have to do it by themselves and… they have to finish it.
A friend of mine (she still is) gave me a 1000 piece puzzle, just in time for being trapped in my rectory for a few days. When I started it, dumping out a jumble of pieces on a card table, I questioned whether this was a productive endeavor. When you see that mess of pieces, it makes you want to just go up and take a nap. But as I went on, the puzzle became a seminar on problem solving and leadership skills. (Don’t worry, I did it by myself.) Here’s what I learned.
- Beginning is a commitment. When you open a jigsaw puzzle box, you better be dedicated to finish it or you are lost. Without that commitment the puzzle, and a bit of your self-worth is
- Start with what you know. My particular puzzle was covers of Playbill theatre productions. This gave me the plan of starting with similar colored pieces. Within minutes, I had put a whole section together and I knew I could make it through. A good idea to get you going is to set aside the side pieces so that you can get a good framework from which to
- Celebrate small victories. There is a rush of dopa- mine you get when a piece fits together with another piece. Finishing a section, or finding a piece that fits into a particular way feels great and often gives you the drive to keep
- Don’t forget about the big picture. My puzzle was relatively easy because I could see where different covers fit into the whole schema. Hairspray, Come From Away and Mean Girls (all titles of shows) were at the top. Frozen, Waitress, Hamilton and Tootsie were at the bottom. Eventually I had to see how each indi- vidual part fit into the whole frame. It was gratifying when different parts fit
- Don’t force it. There were a couple of times when I would set a piece, but it didn’t feel right and although it seemed OK, it was off ever so slightly. In general when you have to force a piece into the puzzle, that piece is in the wrong place. There was one time when the piece was so close and it only looks a bit off, but there was something that told me that it wasn’t
I took it apart and (after a 15 minute search) found the precise piece. And learned a great lesson.
- You may need to change tactics along the way. Just seeing the color of pieces served me well for about 60% of the puzzle. Then I hit a point where ALL THE PIECES LOOKED THE SAME. That was a problem. So I arranged the remaining pieces and assigned them a number from 0 to 4. Pieces with no protrusions (a bump out) were 0, then 1, 2, 3 and 4. This narrowed the number of pieces I needed to look through to fit into the puzzle. Sometimes I needed to guess, but that often worked well. In other words, I had to change my method in order to complete the puzzle. Any great leader understands this
- Frustration is a part of any process. With al- most any puzzle, you will hit some stumbling blocks, some seemingly insurmountable problems. The middle part of my puzzle (Rent, Hadestown, Moulin Rouge and the Cher Show) was all dark and muddled. The clear bright easy pieces of Mama Mia and Tootsie gave way to shadowy and opaque tones. It was difficult. This was going to take longer than I had hoped. I handled my frustration in two ways. I would work on those parts a bit at a time. I didn’t ignore them, but I would walk away from them every now and then. When I would return I would gaze at them with a bit more pur- pose, noticing some of the subtle nuances of their tints. With one frame I need to see it in the total context of the whole puzzle. Once I did that, it was easy. In eve- ry problem, you need to manage your
- Flow is heavenly. There is a reason why puzzles, Lego models and the like, are addictive, they often lead us into what is called “Flow.” That term was coined by the Russian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (I’d like to buy a vowel.). It is a state of hyper-focus, in- tense concentration on the present moment and a loss of reflective self-consciousness. Time becomes altered. It is a great feeling. (At times, I feel that in golf.) It is great, every so often, to get lost in an activity, to get sucked into the vortex of something positive and re- warding. I felt that as I was working on my puzzle. That feeling might just be what heaven is
- Success needs to be shared. When I finished, I put my work up on the internet. I realize that I accom- plished something that the average twelve year old
could do, but it was im- portant to me to share my work. Why? Because suc- cess builds on success. So the next time I run into a problem, the next time I cannot find the right piece, the next time things don’t fit together, I can look back to what I did during the Snow- storm of 2022 and remem- ber that I can and will get through it and I can make something good.
Bit by bit.