I just finished a great jigsaw puzzle with my wife, Alexa.
The specific jigsaw puzzle which we completed is from a company called Wentworth, and it was designed and produced in England with these wonderful wooden pieces. The particular puzzle we completed was 250 pieces.
Now, Alexa and I approach jigsaw puzzle problem solving differently.
I start first with separating out all of the straight edged pieces, with particular attention to the corners. Once I have the circumference of the puzzle built, I worked inwards, usually basing selections on color, then shape.
My wife, however, likes to work on the inside of the puzzle, trying to create one of the internal elements – in this puzzle’s case, a cat face. She then works outwards.
My approach is more mechanical, hers more intuitive, but the one thing we both have in common is patience – the patience of the puzzle!
I believe much of a personal or organizational digital platform can be approached like a jigsaw puzzle.
There certainly can be foundational elements, such as my circumferential boundary or my wife’s internal figure, from which we build from. In a digital platform, this foundational structure will usually be your website.
However after that, I believe patience is more important then strategy.
For example, does it really matter that much whether you’re first focusing on putting your Facebook and Twitter elements together or whether instead you’re integrating a podcast into your website?
Probably not, or at least it pales in comparison to the importance of patience and daily moving forward.
Now I don’t want to take the analogy of a jigsaw puzzle too far. If the digital platform is indeed a jigsaw puzzle, then it’s a jigsaw puzzle with ever-expanding borders which often has pieces changing shape (especially if one of your pieces is Facebook!).
But no matter what, I guarantee that for successful completion of either digital platforms or jigsaw puzzles, the magic ingredient is always patience.