Random, I know. But the other night I was working on a puzzle with the family. At least it’s better than TV all the time. ha ha. Anyway, I realized that my method of working on a puzzle is always the same, I flip over everything and find all the edge pieces. I don’t pay any attention to the other pieces, I don’t do any sorting, and I don’t start looking for matching. I’m looking for the boundaries. Once I have those in place, I can start working on the insides. Now my wife is very different. She picks a landmark piece in the puzzle and works to put it together, then build it outward from there, or jumps to an entirely different area of the puzzle.
Since I know myself pretty well, I realized this is actually quite indicative of my personality. I look to find the constraints first, then work inwards. In my daily life, this usually means I figure out all my “edge” pieces. I find all the things I can’t do, I have to work around, or I have to fit within. From there, I go about finding my solution. My wife on the other hand is much more creative than I am. (I’m the doer, she’s the one with the ideas). She always has random ideas, creative solutions, or somethings I just look at and scratch my head about? The difference is that she doesn’t stop to look at what is possible, or what fit within “reality”, she just has the idea and works it out from there.
Personally, I strive for more of her approach. When you constrain yourself, you instantly stop looking outside of the box. I quickly build the box, and often struggle to move beyond it without some guidance from my friends. Now, I know that a puzzle isn’t a perfect analogy, since you “can’t” do anything outside the box, but just looking at how we focus on things can open us up a bit. So I had the revelation that I need to stop focusing so much on the what the limits are, and rather just focus on the solution. Like in the Matrix, some rules can be broken, some can be bent. You often don’t know until you try… What’s your method for putting together a puzzle???
Thanks for reading,
As always, thanks for reading and don't forget to check out our SAP Service Management Products at my other company JaveLLin Solutions,Mike