The Puzzle Framework
My best shot at a VERY brief overview
There are a lot of goal-setting frameworks out there. This is not one of them. Some people do really well with goal-setting frameworks; I do not. We set goals, even SMART or ‘wise’ goals, look at them regularly, and sometimes achieve them. But what did we achieve in ourselves? There has always been something missing for me in them. There’s the goal out there…but how was it set? Usually it’s based on a desire in the moment or from a mental model that ‘looks’ like it will be good for us.
Some philosophies think desire & attachment are sources of suffering. We look at goals as the end and the stuff in the middle is what we have to do and put up with to get to our goal. Or we remind ourself that the journey is the real goal.
Inside The Puzzle we build something greater than the goal and the journey. We’re moving towards a vision of our Puzzle, complete with all the things that might affect our progress and how we affect others, and we build ourselves. We build our story, our impact, our self-expression. Lots of the same tools of visualization, articulation, and focus. This can be seen as closer to values-based living, but when I tried that I still felt it was incomplete. We choose values based on how we want to show up in the world, but how do we then figure out the act of showing up in the world? This is values-building work where we feel our connection to our values.
Inside The Puzzle we choose how to focus on our Puzzle, less desired outcome and more visualization and gratitude. We either build pieces or use them, and we fully engage with our Puzzle, with our life, every day. In doing so, in being engaged with life, our Puzzle changes and grows. The puzzle in front of us is a vision, an idea. The puzzle behind us is a picture. And every new day is creation through focus & presence, intention & attention. Or, at least, the opportunity for that.
In the simplest of terms, the easy analogy, we can look at the vision of our puzzle as the collection of pieces we currently either care or about or we’re obligated to act on.
Some days we have the opportunity to focus on all of the areas, some days it’s just one area of our Puzzle. When we are acting on an area of our Puzzle we paint a picture in that area of the puzzle - the picture of how we showed up that day. If we act on that area with focus & presence, intention & attention, we paint a vibrant picture and that area grows. When we dial it in or are distracted and later look back at that area it’ll be blurry or empty.
Every day the Puzzle changes. If we’re engaged with it, with life, it naturally grows in complexity. Even if we’re focused on just one thing, as our knowledge or skill in that thing grows through engagement that area of the puzzle becomes more complex because we’ve increased the…contact area…of that piece.
The relationships with our Puzzle and the outside world become more complex. If we do well at work there’s more opportunity to do work. If we have a great time with friends, we deepen our relationship with them and our connection to them grows. Anytime we’re expanding our knowledge or skills or relationships pieces get more complex we may also be creating new pieces and new areas of the puzzle to focus on.
When our puzzle grows in complexity, often our capacity for complexity grows, too. We can hold all these things as important in our lives and it just takes more presence, more engagement to act on all these things. We have all likely contemplated the above. And when we sit down and think about our lives, based on most frameworks out there, we shouldn’t select too many things to focus on. And I think heading into any system or framework it’s good to start simple. But if we’re engaged we can move quickly to holding a more complex vision and our days can become more and more amazing.
The magic comes in the practice - practicing our visualization, practicing presence, practicing taking control of our own Puzzle and placing our own pieces, practicing helping other people with their puzzles, and practicing understanding how all of our puzzles are connected. The concepts in The Puzzle makes practice easier. And with practice I think we uncover that it is in the engagement, the intention & attention cycle, that we can truly find not just ourselves but the best version of ourselves.
**No AI writing ever, this is all an evolving concept please let me know what you think in the comments.**