Yesterday I placed the last piece into the hardest jigsaw puzzle I have ever come across.
It was made by Mensa and they call it a ‘Flipsaw’ puzzle. A Flipsaw because each piece has two images on it. You can see one image at one angle and the other image at another angle.
So you couldn’t just group pieces together after a quick glance, you had to inspect each piece individually by holding it at the appropriate angle.
Then to add another level of difficulty, on one side there were zebras and on the other penguins, all closely grouped together.
So there was black and white on every single jigsaw piece!
That’s ok though, everyone knows you begin a jigsaw puzzle by joining together the edge pieces.
The flat side provided the perfect ‘in’ to start this puzzle.
Boom! Border done!
But now the easiest pieces are out of the way and we are in no man’s land.
Staring at the amount of pieces left to place was overwhelming. There were so many and finding the right fit for just one was so hard.
Remembering the location of certain zebra stripes was extremely difficult because half of the time they would be penguin patterns.
So after the great start, progress on this jigsaw was minimal, if any, in the following months.
I was in a painful place.
On the one hand it pained me to walk past the unfinished puzzle and on the other hand it pained me to try and complete it.
I was constantly reminded of my failure and pushed to the brink of insanity trying to rectify it.
I knew there are two ways to deal with a problem – avoid it or lean into it. So far avoiding the puzzle hadn’t solved it so I knew leaning in was the only way (well really I knew that before the puzzle). The trouble was summoning the strength to start leaning in.
Then, I can’t remember when, but at some point I decided to approach this jigsaw puzzle with a new philosophy.
‘How do you eat an elephant?’
‘One bite at a time!’
I threw out any expectation of a final finish date and instead went to work at placing three pieces a day.
Some days would be great, I’d aim for three pieces and unintentionally get 8.
Some days were slow, I’d be pushed to my wit’s end just to scrape together the three.
Three pieces put a limit on those dastardly feelings of being overwhelmed and ensured forward motion.
Then interestingly, after I had made sufficient progress, others started helping me.
Just by chipping away I had changed the puzzle from an overwhelming problem everyone avoided to a manageable one everyone wanted to help with.
Then, a mere six months after starting, the jigsaw puzzle was complete. The dragon was slain and the quest was over.
Luke had Emperor Palpatine, Harry had Voldemort and I had this jigsaw puzzle.
Luke brought an end to the evil Galactic Empire, Harry brought peace to the muggle and wizarding worlds, and I bring you this blog post.
Reading about my experience I hope you would take away the benefits of leaning into a problem and maintaining forward motion but in the unintended possibility that I have persuaded you to buy such a puzzle, below is a link to it on Amazon. Enjoy! 😛
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mensa-IQ-1077-Jigsaw-Puzzle-Green/dp/B07FWK7PVK
Thomas Duggan 