If I can’t figure something out, I might say I’m puzzled. This puzzled feeling has a tendency to occur more often when the outcome I want seems either, far away from my reach, quite difficult or very important to me.
The key to unlocking the puzzled feeling is to use the idea of a puzzle ?.
When you look at a puzzle, whether it is a small 10 piece puzzle or a larger 1,000 piece puzzle, how do you start?
Most people start by taking the first step. You wouldn’t think you could solve it in one step, but you could make progress. Take one step. Pick up a piece. Place it somewhere. Group items that seem similar. Turn a piece 90 degrees. Or more. Get it wrong. Get it right. Try other pieces. Put together separate sections as they become more obvious. Add the separate sections to the main puzzle.
It usually takes longer to place each piece at the beginning of the task, but you can often move a little faster as you gather some early wins and get some momentum as you see things starting to come together. Then we tend to reach a tipping point. You can go quicker and quicker because you’ll have seen each piece that remains more than once and also seen the places they could go more than once. Familiarity has a calming effect and helps make quicker decisions.
Then the magic happens as you race through the last pieces with excitement, anticipation and pride of achievement. Seeing it all coming together, you finish it.
Done ✅
This is how you achieve anything that you want to do in life. It’s all the same. Only the (project) names will change.
When puzzled, procrastinating or panicked, use the puzzle process.
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