I used to do a puzzle about once a year, typically with my mom over Christmas break. This past year, we – along with my girlfriend – ramped it up and did four or five puzzles. Part of it was driven by a near-term and new-found obsession with puzzles. But part of it was driven by the mindset created while doing puzzles.
Puzzling offers a simple and straightforward path into flow, that now near-ubiquitous term made famous by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. There is next to no worry or anxiety created by puzzling, while selection of a properly difficult puzzle will keep you above the threshold of falling into boredom or simply feeling relaxed. There is something titillating about seeking out that oddly-shaped or uniquely-colored piece, and a sense of satisfaction at locating it. As simple as it may seem, puzzling offers a sense of accomplishment.
At the same time, puzzling is fairly passive in what it requires from you mentally. In a sense, I would equate it to walking, where the simple act of moving at a pace made familiar through countless millennia of human evolution can prime neural pathways for pondering ideas. If walking allows us to follow the rhythms of our bodies, then puzzling allows us to follow the rhythms of our minds. Puzzling (or similarly, doodling, coloring, art, generally, or walking) lets us move and think at our own pace, a pace conducive to pondering thoughts and ideas in a manner that is often lacking in our modern world. What each of these activities shares in common is that they all force us to slow down. We intentionally create space and time for depth. Often, this depth can be explored alongside another person, as well.
Even though we adore the trope of the singularly genius creator or self-made man, it should be obvious that no one creates in a vacuum. We are constantly subject to outside influences, both positive and negative. Puzzling, as with walking, allows your mind the space to take stock of those influences and begin to put the disparate pieces together. Now this is not to disparage the idea of self-reliance (particularly the notion of it written about by Emerson), but merely an acknowledgement and appreciation of the influence of environment and, frankly, all of humankind.
The benefits of walking to stimulate thoughts are well established, but it turns out that walking in nature is even more beneficial for the brain, as it results in lower levels of brooding – that is, ruminating on negative thoughts, as we so often are prone to do while sitting in traffic, for instance. Working on puzzles, it turns out, has a similar effect, as puzzling promotes mindfulness, creativity, and even spatial reasoning. In much the same way that active navigation promotes improved spatial memory, the act of remembering a shape or color and then locating the piece to fit it also benefits short-term memory and awareness.
Beyond the health benefits of puzzling, I just enjoy the freedom to let my mind wander, while still feeling as though I am focused on a task. Time spent doing a puzzle also offers time to listen to an audiobook or podcast, while having sufficient bandwidth to accomplish both.
Furthermore, puzzling offers a respite during the long, cold winter months when it can be difficult to get outside and walk or into nature. Instead, we can sit down to a puzzle of a forest or a beach and temporarily get lost in the scenes materializing before our eyes. Whether or not such a scene depicted in a puzzle has the same effects as actually being in nature is secondary; we can still immerse ourselves in the often bucolic images and feel the stresses of life melt away.
