In this occasional series, I’ll be looking at some non-creative, non-work things I do that both relax me and mentally prepare me to start back on creative work. Work stuff is important, but non-work stuff matters too.
When I was a kid I did jigsaw puzzles I assembled on a sheet of plywood under my bed. This was between late elementary school and early high school, when I got good enough to put together the 500- and 1000-piece landscapes and illustrations my family had amassed over a generation, and that I regularly got for Christmases and birthdays. I’d assemble each puzzle over a period of weeks (or, as I got busier, months), working for stretches of an hour or two while listening to music.
Over the years I honed the steps necessary for doing puzzles quickly and efficiently: browsing through the box to find the edge pieces, trying likely matches first, putting together the divisions between sections, seeking out smaller areas to fill in more of the grid. So too did I learn how best to flip over every piece in the box one at a time for easier browsing so I could gently brush them aside in search of the ones I needed.
There was something bigger, though, that fascinated me about puzzles. I remember being very small and having my father help me with a particularly difficult Where’s Waldo puzzle, and he summarized the process with a few words: Once you snap a piece into the right spot, you’re one step closer to finishing, and no one can ever take that away from you.
One step closer to finishing, and no one can ever take that away. That idea stuck with me for a long time.
Puzzle section at my local department store in Japan, which also sells puzzle frames and glue.
I Rediscovered Jigsaw Puzzles in Japan
I lost track of my old under-the-bed puzzleboard after high school, and the last puzzle I actually did was over a decade ago. I’d more or less relegated jigsaw puzzles among the list of childhood things I used to have fun with but for whatever reason lost track of.
Then I came to Japan, where puzzles are freakin’ EVERYWHERE. I took the above photo in the toy section at my local big-box store, where the entire side of one aisle is devoted to jigsaw puzzles. The Studio Ghibli films feature prominently, as do other anime (One Piece, Conan, etc.) and Disney, along with flowers, animals, Japanese landscapes, foreign locales, sunsets, and most everything else you can think of. Dolphin-filled seascapes painted with hues of purple and blue are also popular, reminding me of the ‘90s when it was all Lisa Frank folders and Trapper Keepers.
I found myself browsing the department store puzzle sections first out of curiosity, then more seriously. It’d be nice, I thought, to do a puzzle again, just to see if I still could.
I had some time over the New Year’s vacation, so after much consideration I stopped by a home goods store and picked up a sheet of corrugated sheet plastic and a cutter knife. I measured the space under my bed and cut the sheet down to 91 x 110 cm (about 36 x 43 inches) using my Japanese metric tape measure.
Corrugated plastic puzzleboard, measured to fit under my bed, and the same Matsuo Hiromi Hint of Romance puzzle from the cover photo.
Can I just talk about how awesome Japanese cutter knives are? You snap off old sections of the blade as they wear out, then turn the black dial to move a new section of blade upward like a mechanical pencil. How cool is that??
Then, I started on my 1000-piece Tenki no Ko puzzle. It’s the cover poster for the Makoto Shinkai anime of the same name (Weathering with You in English).
Tenki no Ko Puzzle, 1000 pieces, end of Day 1.
Doing Jigsaw Puzzles Focuses Me and Gives Me the Confidence of Accomplishing Something
I did the Weathering With You puzzle over seven non-consecutive days spread out over three months, working in spurts of one to three hours. I worked on the floor while listening to podcasts, usually after dinner. It was an enjoyable way to spend nights when I had enough energy for a real activity but wanted to stay away from screens.
It’s amazing how so much of the process came back to me from when I was a kid: the methodical way of sorting the pieces, choosing sections to tackle one at a time, filling in more of the picture bit by bit. And then the skill of matching colors and hues, guessing which piece went where, and trying every slot until you found the right one. The process is engrossing, and just like when I was a kid I found myself slipping into that productive flow of work where I lost track of time and became one with the puzzle.
Of equal importance was the satisfaction that comes with filling in the picture, of tackling a section and then finishing it, and being able to say, “Yes, I did it!” and knowing that once that section, or even that single piece, is in place, nothing can ever take that away.
In this sense, doing jigsaw puzzles embodies the steady, step-by-step movement toward a goal where you start off with literally nothing, then work toward completion bit by bit. Along the way the process grows easier as you find yourself with fewer and fewer pieces in the box, but it also grows more difficult as those sections near the end tend to be the most indistinct, and therefore the most difficult.
Doing a puzzle, then, becomes a process of seeking out the best path to completion, the one that will bring you most smoothly toward fitting in that last piece.
Reliving this process as an adult was not only familiar, but it brought me back to that time when eleven-year-old Ian was still learning about the world and how to best tackle its problems. It occurs to me now that learning to do puzzles was a stepping stone to how I learned to pursue goals in other areas of my life, including my creative work.
Do I live to pursue things I want, to set goals and then work toward them one step at a time? In many ways, yes. Perhaps this is also why setbacks like natural disasters or cancelled plans or COVID-19 or broken promises upset me so much, because they clash with the rules of jigsaw puzzles that I fell in love with as a kid, where every piece, once set in place, is one piece closer to finishing, and no one can ever take that away from you.
I wish life were more like that…
End of Day 6. The final sections of white for the clouds were particularly difficult, since they couldn’t be easily matched to a single area.
Active Hobbies That Reinforce Your Values Are Important
Most of my non-writing hobbies (reading, watching movies, listening to music, etc.) are relatively passive, and involve absorbing content rather than creating something. Puzzles, though, form the perfect contrast in that they don’t require a lot of tough critical thinking but can keep my brain active using the muscle memory reflexes I developed as a kid. When I’ve finished a puzzle I can feel the pride of accomplishment that comes from completing something, and even though in the end it’s only a jigsaw puzzle, the excitement still feels real, and that’s what matters.
I’m not saying that everyone should go out and start doing jigsaw puzzles as adults. Unless you grew up doing them like I did, you probably won’t feel the same thrill I did as a kid, and you may just find them frustrating. (Also, apparently jigsaw puzzle sales in the US have skyrocketed during COVID-19 lockdowns and are still kind of hard to get?)
Instead, I encourage you to think about other engaging, non-creative hobbies you can make time for that resonate with the way you view the world. These hobbies are going to look different for everyone, but the feeling of getting back into them, or starting anew, could be just as engaging for you as jigsaw puzzles are for me.