Solve, create, share and talk about jigsaw puzzles

Hey, are you up?

Our minds are built in a manner that allows us to grow smarter throughout our lives – you can help this process along by fighting the urge to do too much business as usual.

2:43 Robbos 2
Hey, are you up?

“Yaaawn…”

My alarm clock went off significantly earlier than usual that school morning because Magnus was out of town and would be for the following three days.

On a typical day I’ll sleepwalk through the classic morning stages of a family with school kids: Get the kids up (and yourself), get the kids dressed (and yourself, preferably), feed the kids (this you can and probably will postpone for yourself) and get the kids the school.

I usually take care of the homebound stages of the morning while Magnus gets ready and then comes down when it’s time to take the kids to get to school. Upon his returning, we’ll leave the house together to go to the office.

That morning I had to do it all alone, and man was I focused! Taking it all in on the way to school as if I was on an excursion in a strange city at an odd hour.

So, how did it go?

The kids made it to school on time, I missed breakfast, but gained a spiffy conversation with my 8-year old about why Greenland is called Greenland (don’t ask – I’m still not sure). And on the way home, I was overwhelmed with joy over the feeling of the chilly morning air on my tired face. And intrigued by watching people’s faces as they went by me on their bicycles and in their cars.

Nothing was as it usually is.

I had to pay attention to everything to get the job done - and hence I took in a lot of information from the world. And I had to make sense of that information to see if things were going in the right direction as for the aim: get the kids to school in time and preferably on happy feet.

Now – onwards to you (you knew this was coming).

We build habits. We’re designed to. It’s a matter of efficiency and resources of the brain.

The human mind is, amongst other things, characterized by the ability to grow new connections throughout our entire lives (neuroplasticity) and even new neurons (neurogenesis). Earlier on, scientists thought we were born with a set number of neurons, and we’d be ‘using’ them up throughout our lifetime. Today we know that this is not so.

We know that we continue to build on our experiences. Linking new information with information we’ve already gathered – and coming up with new perspectives, ideas, and learnings from this. Always. Every day. But although we’re build to go through life getting smarter, we have to do our bit to really enable this process.

One of these things is that we have to fight sleepwalking.

Sleepwalking equals going about business as always. Do the same stuff as always and doing it in the same manner. Hence your behavior becomes more or less hardwired, and you act without giving it a second thought.

To fight this, you have to break the script. You have to wake up to focus.

Break the script of the day and – if you’d like to add power to this exercise – break the script of how you see yourself (because this by large steers which actions you’ll take throughout the day).

You say:

• “I’m not the sort of person who goes to a movie by myself” – go to a movie by yourself!

• “I’m not the sort of person who chats someone up on the street” – smile and say hello to a lucky bypasser on the street.

• “I don’t have the patience to read a book” – yeah, you guessed it.

New experiences, severely breaking the script, will make your head spin and infuse energy and courage into you!

Now, you can use this knowledge regarding the time you spend on Jigidi. Do you have a particular manner in which you enjoy your Jigidi time? (unless you’re not human just nod).

We have set Jigidi up so that you can stretch the legs you’d like, and on the scale, you prefer.

We facilitate human connection across physical and mental borders, de-stressing, cognitive training, creative and intellectual stretching (acquisition of new knowledge and skills and using this while getting feedback from others).

This scalability means that you can make Jigidi work for you on different levels as far as brain training goes. Make good of that!

Do you always solve puzzles? Maybe you’d consider stretching your expressive legs and create a puzzle for your fellow puzzlers?

Do you typically upload puzzles of a specific sort found online? Perhaps you’d consider grabbing a camera and taking a picture you’d like to share with the rest of us?

Or how about leaving that kind and clever comment for your favorite puzzler that you’ve been contemplating?

You get the gist of it, I’m sure.

I’ll leave you with a quote from an expert on brain health, John Arden, Ph.D. from his book ‘The Brain Bible’ (once you’ve overcome the title the book makes for a beautiful read):

“Mature brains tend to be far denser in the number of connections between neurons, which means they are capable of greater complexity of thought. Instead of being a young tree with few branches, they have interlocking branches that make the accumulated knowledge possible.”

Maybe go add a few more branches before this day is over and reap the benefits of novelty? ♥

With lots of love, Jigidi

Comments

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I was just wondering if anyone out there can teach me how to speed up on how I do puzzles. I do them everyday from morning until night but I still can not get them done any faster. I just love jigidi.

Love, love, love Jigidi. Thank you Jigidi staff, and thank you to all in the jigidi community.
To speak to your piece about the brain becoming hardwired, we had a new faucet installed in our apartment a few months ago and due to muscle memory and doing things while on 'autopilot', it's taken about 6 weeks to not revert to the old way of trying to use the faucet, and fumbling since the old one is significantly different than the new. It's been interesting to just look at that and to consider how the brain works. By now we've created a new muscle memory and a new pathway in the brain, and can go back to sleep while doing the dishes.
Um, but that wasn't your point in the blog, was it? O.K., I've only been doing other people's puzzles. Maybe some day I'll be inspired and create my own. Meantime, again, love, love, love Jigidi.

pindemiche

The immensity of what I have discovered on Jigidi is undescribable (not sure it is a word in English) : animals, wild or not, paintings, landscapes of all over the world, colours, millions of colours, textiles, challenges (awful), flowers and cups of coffee...
I am french-speaking, but on Jigidi I practice my english, of course, spanish, italian : I just love it.
I suffer from dysthymia, that is chronic depression, and Jigidi is the only place where I can go when I do not feel well because there, I can still be active, enjoy what I do and have the feeling that I am competent. Nothing in the world could replace Jigidi for me.
I have the bad, or good (?) habit of finding the title of a painting, the name of a site, etc. when it is not mentioned. I love to look for these informations; it is not at all a critic, though. I hope that the persons who put the puzzle on Jigidi will forgive me.
Michèle from Montréal, Québec, Canada.

Fowly

I too start and end my day with jigidi, it certainly helps maintain my sanity. The friendly conversing with fellow puzzlers is also a big part of my welfare and happiness. Thank you for creating such a safe haven for us. I would love to post puzzles but the instructions stop at the point of telling me there are two easy steps. So I lose myself in other jigidiers.
I wish everyone good health and happiness. Fay.

jasonchung2

I love solving digital jigsaw puzzles at Jigidi :-)

RADEN

Yes indeed. I have found that at different times of day, there are different people online, and the puzzles are indeed different for sure. So, I can sometimes see patterns in the type of puzzles being posted. I know that sounds silly, but it is true. Thank you for creating this great paper. Hugs and Blessings.

grandmapegs

Loving the well written Jigidi Newsletter, Thank you.

brightspark

is there any way we could Follow these posts??

brightspark

Dear Mette you speak so eloquently - jigidi makes life so much more interesting as we use our brains to solve puzzles and to converse with our wonderful friends from all over the world ☺☺☺ and yes it is great to try something new, to put on a brave face and hide what we are feeling beneath or to share our experiences with our friends here, to empathise and sympathise, to inspire and to encourage - oh how i love jigidi for so many reasons and to spread love and not hate ♥♥♥ love sparklightie and brightspark xxxx

I just want to say that my brain is a scattered mess, most of my memories lost because of medications....I come here to try to strengthen my memory and hopefully help my cluttered brain have a few moments of peace!!! Thank you for this

Jumble

You write very well Mettem, and the way you described the start of your day is so good, I could almost have been there. Well done.

RebeccaB

Iammjc, I dare say Jigidi has been a lifeline for more people than we'll ever know.

Iammjc

I am a true and hardened Jigidist - been solving and creating for over ten years now. Jigidi helped me to maintain my sanity as I worked full time as an emergency mental health specialist dealing with suicidal folks and cared for my daughter who was dying of cancer and her 2 little girls under 4, by giving me spaces of peace as I tried to figure it all out - to make sense of the seeming senselessness around me - to make whole that which has been broken into 63 pieces. Now, years later, I love sharing my art, my photos on Jigidi - I post them as silent prayers of love and light sent out to whoever might need it.

RebeccaB

Try brushing your teeth with your other hand - and don't choke on the toothpaste as you laugh at yourself.

Duine

My neighbors don't speak to each other, but I may have a reason to speak to one next time I see him. Yesterday, I opened my door to take out trash, at that moment I turned a bit and loudly said "leave that alone or it will shrivel up and fall off!" just as he was passing by. He turned and stared at me bug eyes for a few seconds, then hurried down the street.

I feel the need to explain to him that I was speaking to my puppy who chases her tail, catches hold and runs full speed in circles. Hopefully he isn't a gossip and I see him before the neighbors hear his version. (:

frauhugs

i just discovered this new feature,
thanks for a great start to my day!
i am thankful to Magnus for having the idea to start this wonderful site for people from all over the world to share their photos, graphics and things they find on the www with each other.
i start my day with a cup of coffee and a couple of puzzles, and end my day by solving a puzzle.
thanks for this great creative outlet!
thanks bunches, char

ps- Mette- i agree- you express your thoughts beautifully

mackabroin

I too don't have anything to add to your post......but I do remember the kind of day you describe.........it was a long time ago...now I just get up and do a puzzle and have almost as much fun .....at least in the winter I don't have to bundle the kids all up and go out in the cold.........this is a wonderful site you have created...and I am so glad that someone told me about it.........thanks.........and ......thanks.robin

Bluestockings

Mette, you do write very well, and your thoughts are very interesting. I am one of those who used to be a great reader but now am drawn too often to the shiny object that is the Internet. The article you link to above inspires me to try harder to get back into the habit of reading. I would like to mention that although I do post puzzles "of a specific sort found online" rather than creating my own images, I have found it engrossing, informative, and fun to search for paintings online and learn more about the artists and their connections. I also like to just "veg out" sometimes with a soothing puzzle, typically a mosaic, that occupies one part of my brain while another part processes a problem or source of pain in the background. (I imagine Jigidi serves this function for a lot of users.)

Thank you, Mette, and thanks to Magnus, of course.

SophieJo

I just found this, tapped in and cannot add to anything that was said on previous post (would you make my day) - you've calmed me down on many occasion - Thanks for being here ^..^

ringleader2

Mette, you write very well. Thank you. I have read that most humans use only about 10% of their brain power. Jigidi has spurred me into areas I never would have believed possible. It's wonderful how helpful we are to each other. Wishing you a beautiful day from hot, humid Maryland, USA. ...Ardy