Inspirations From a Jigsaw

You know that awesome feeling when you accomplish a super challenging task? The awe inspiring sense of achievement. You feel like you can conquer the world! A real big winner!

It’s no secret that I LOVE Jigsaw puzzles and LEGO! The bigger, the better!

Why?

Because they come with instructions!!
Jigsaw puzzles - even though they may come in thousands of pieces, it is based off of a known picture so I know what is going to look like at the end.
LEGO - hello step by step instructions on what to do and how it looks from beginning to end.

Also, finishing a Jigsaw or a LEGO scratches the itch that is sometimes left with the lingering “unknown”. The reality is, when you play in the proactive space not everything you look at is going to turn out to be something. What I will say though, it is fun to watch changes through an organisation when you look at the data. For example, I can tell when the organisation is upgrading the Windows OS; because the version of Windows runs an internet test. The logs gets filled with this brand new URL that maybe a month ago didn’t even exist in the logs. (I am digressing…)

I got a nice serve recently when I finished my 1500pc Starry Night puzzle. It annoyed me to no end to find out that this puzzle had 4 pieces pieces! SERIOUSLY WT…

I raged internally for 1 minute.
I looked around the room to see if I could find the missing pieces for 10 minutes.
When I sat back in my chair in defeat, I started asking myself…

Why did I put the puzzle together?
Can I not still tell that this is Starry Night, one of the greatest artworks of our time?
Are the 4 missing pieces really that important?

Understanding my purpose, helped me decide my next steps. I admired the finished puzzle as it was, gave it a hug and gave my husband the pleasure of breaking it apart and boxing it up.

I was advised that I can reach out to the manufacturer and get the missing pieces sent to me.

Yes I could. But the effort was not worth my time.

You see, my purpose for putting this puzzle together in the first place was to challenge myself. I wanted to have a go at a big puzzle with largely similar colours, test my patience and ability to sort the similar from the other similar (sound similar? Kinda like my day job).

Now if my purpose was to put this together and then frame it; my actions would have been very different. I would have reached out to the manufacturer to get the missing pieces.

In other words, some battles are worth fighting if the purpose requires it. It is important for us to always take a step back and understand the purpose of what we are doing. This will help us use our time, effort and energy more efficiently; especially in this noisy world with so much going on.

Before you pursue a solution I would challenge you to take a step back and think about the purpose of what you are going to do. Think about the potential effort you are going to need and what steps you need to prioritise over others.

Like my jigsaw, you don’t necessarily need to complete all the steps to reach a workable solution.