The mind needs puzzles.

I doesn’t quite cares what puzzles… insofar as it has puzzles.
For some it’s Wordle. Some Soduku. It’s Crossy Road and Fornite and Call of Duty.

But the mind needs bigger puzzles. Or rather, it needs grander puzzles, that is if it’s going to find joy.

It needs things to do, something to solve long term. It needs a goal, something to strive for.

The world around us provides us with so many puzzles just waiting to be sorted through. We’ve got homework to do, soccer to win, a bridge to build, or someone’s teeth pull.

We’ve got our occupation. Or rather, the thing that occupies our time. It occupies the majority of our time.

Whether we like it or not, the job we’ve got is the problems we solve. We might enjoy those problems, we might not… but even if we don’t, it tricks the brain into thinking it’s solving puzzles.

We might be solving puzzles, but we also might not give a flock of seagulls about those puzzles in the first place.

There’s paperwork to be done, accounts to create, furniture to move, bosses to brief. We load the brain with puzzles.

But they’re puzzles that others us have set up. Our roads break. Our teeth dirty. Our bones break.

And we may have strolled into one of these professions without thinking twice. But next thing you know, we’re in so deep, it feels like you can’t get out. We’re stuck with these problems…

But we’re not. Puzzles continuously need solving because humans continue to have problems. We fight, and could use therapy. We fuck and could use birth control.

We strive for health. Some don’t understand exercise.
We strive for happiness. Some don’t understand peace.
We strive for cleanliness. Some don’t understand renewable resources.

Point is, the world around us needs maintenance. We need coffee to drink and cake pops to eat. So the world provided us with Starbucks.

But it’s really just some guy who was super passionate about coffee and cake pops. Jerry Baldwin to be precise. (3 guys actually)

There are puzzles that need solving. But we often merely relegate ourselvs to the problems that are already being solved. It’s a paved path. Lawyers and doctors. Humans will continuously disagree and need to be fixed. Those professions will stick around.

But it feels like we get caught up in the money game. We chase the things that bring us status rather than chasing the problems we deeply care about solving.

Money is merely a medium of exchange, a proxy for value. If we provide value to the world, we’re rewarded money.

“You’re paid in direct proportion to the problems you solve”

Elon Musk

Whether we love or hate the guy, he’s the wealthiest in the world.

But we get so caught up in the money. We think it’s the end state.
But the money isn’t the focus. It’s the activity for our brains. It’s the puzzles we solve.

Brains Desire

For whatever reason, our brains have this intense desire to feel occupied. They want to be working, learning, processing, or interacting with people and the world around us.

They like to interaction with other brains and other people. Brains are curious about brains.

But PUZZLES, man. Our brains like PUZZLES.

I think it’s why I’m so fond of long walks and writing. They’re consolidated forms of thinking… problem solving. That attendant I talked to, that convo with my boss, my friend I pissed off… the brain thinks about people.

I find that meditation weeds out unimportant problems, walks and writing allows me to solve them.

Differences

But everyone needs different types of puzzles.

I’m not convinced about personalities, but one thing for sure is that our brains are all set up differently. We need different things. Nobody tells us how our brains work. We exist and maybe, just maybe, after 8 decades we figure them out.

Some people’s puzzle seems to be stability and rules. How do we maintain order? ~40% people.

For some it’s goal setting and reaching milestones. ~30% people.

Some people’s puzzle is figuring out how to connect with others. It’s making people feel good, creating community. ~20% people.

And for some it’s learning, thinking, and understanding the way the world works. ~10% people.

From my limited understanding on brains and personality (David Keirsey), we each fall into primarily one of these camps. But with everything, it’s all a spectrum. We’ve each got a little bit in all of us.

Our brains are set up to do what we need to do to be effective humans. They’re set up to think about things that are already useful for society as a whole.

But left to their own devices, brains think about whatever is right is front of us.

They think about breakfast or that garden or the a-hole that just cut us off.

With no proper goals and no proper puzzles… it’s anyone’s guess where the brain’ll go. It still needs puzzles so it finds them some other ways.

We gossip, talk shit, do drugs, eat sugar, and play video games. Anything, I repeat anything to stimulate the brain.

Without puzzles, our brain’s aimless.

Our brains need the puzzles. If we haven’t given them a sufficiently engaging long term goal, they WILL find other distractions. They need puzzles.

Over COVID I spent 6 damn months sucked in to these gd video games on my phone. Clash Royal, Hearth Stones, and World of Tanks. I couldn’t put them down. I set timers, used routines, tried alarms. Nothing worked.

I knew dopamine levels were all jacked up… but what was the alternative? I didn’t have a substitute. I had no puzzle to solve. I had nothing else to think about, nothing to fill the void.

Our brains need puzzles.

It wasn’t until I took the time to start think 1, 3, 10, 50 years down the line and consider what I actually wanted to do with my life. I finally began to reflect on where I wanted to go, who I wanted to be that my brain that my brain actually got excited.

I set big goals because it was the only thing that demanded the entirety of my focus to think about how the hell I’ll get there.

I hardly ever play video games now, not gained the discipline or am a better person…hardly. But because I’ve found a puzzle that’s sufficiently engaging, my brain doesn’t want to think about anything else. I’ve finally found a puzzle that requires full effort, one that makes me think.

It’s so damn hard to pull ourselves away, not necessarily because these things are addicting (though they are), but because we don’t haven’t filled the void with other puzzles.

Sometimes we find ourselves stuck in a job that doesn’t sufficiently challenge us. It’s mind-numbing. But who’s responsibility is it to find puzzles that we like? Our boss?

It’s up to us to figure out what our brain likes, what it wants to think about.

Hobbies, people or puzzles challenge us, or we slink back into the nearest bucket of dopamine. And out here in Vegas? Those aren’t to tricky to come by.

Puzzles man, puzzles.