Puzzle Me This: The Intersection of Hobbies and Work for Better Life Balance
*A classic business metaphor cliche’d blog post. Happy reading!*
Two+ weeks of hunching over a puzzle mat gave me a literal pain in my neck, my back (NO! Don’t sing the song!), also gave me something unexpected: mental clarity about my business that I hadn't experienced in months.
Here's what surprised me most—working on something completely unrelated to social media research and business admin actually made me better at my job. When I returned to client work after puzzle sessions, I approached problems differently. Wrote proposals with more clarity and more efficiently. Data patterns that had seemed complex suddenly felt more manageable. My to do list clicked into place with the same satisfaction as finding a perfect puzzle piece fit. Both took patience, and breaks, to find a good working groove.
The puzzle reminded me of something I've been inconsistent with: the strategic value of hobbies that have nothing to do with your industry. Your brain needs different types of challenges to stay sharp. Pattern recognition skills transfer across domains. The patience required for detailed work strengthens whether you're sorting puzzle pieces or analyzing campaign data. I also craft and read a lot, but even those can become too routine. I used to think that meant a need for creativity away from my desk job (which isn’t untrue, just perhaps not the whole picture). Expanding your interests offline, outside of work has benefits worth exploring.
Running an agency demands constant mental agility, but we often think that means consuming more industry content, attending more webinars, or networking harder. Sometimes it means deliberately doing something that has absolutely nothing to do with business operations—and trusting that the mental cross-training will make you stronger at your actual work. While I have found this to be true with reading (makes my writing better) and my annual mailing campaign (flexes my creative juices), I haven’t really pushed myself into new hobbies.
After three years into being my own boss and running my social media marketing research agency, I honestly thought I'd conquered patience. Then I attempted my first 1,000-piece puzzle. Once completed, I sat back for all of 15 minutes before I cleared the floor. During that reset I realized this simple activity had just given me one of the more accurate metaphors for entrepreneurship I've witnessed so far.
Starting Without the Right Setup
Just like when I launched my agency in 2022, I dove into this puzzle without proper preparation. No puzzle table, no dedicated workspace—just a mat on the carpet and thinking this would be a weekend, at most 3-4 day project.
When I started my agency, I didn't have the perfect CRM, the ideal office setup, or even a clear understanding of my target market. I had a super old personal laptop, some industry knowledge and loose connections, and the willingness to work in whatever capacity I could to keep the lights on.
The lesson: You don't need perfect conditions to start. You need the willingness to adapt to less-than-ideal circumstances while you build toward something better.
The Danger of Premature Organization
Here's where I made a huge mistake with the puzzle—and the same one I made in my first year of business. I got excited and started separating all my pieces into categories before I understood what I was actually working with.
For the puzzle – initially I put all my edge pieces in one pile, similar colors there, distinctive patterns in another pile. It felt productive, but I kept having to redo my sorting system as I learned more about the puzzle's actual structure. I found edge pieces mixed up in other piles. I misjudged the length and width direction and had to re position the entire puzzle to fit on the mat. Pieces I thought were "definitely roses" turned out to be part of a feather. My confident color groupings fell apart as I discovered subtle variations I'd missed.
In business, this looked like immediately niching down before understanding my market, or building complex systems before I understood my actual workflow. Spending too much time documenting and less time doing. Or finding a solution to a problem that didn’t exist. How I initially approached The Social Questions influencer research methodology is quite different now in year 4 than it was in month 3. I spent my first six months reorganizing my service offerings as I learned what clients actually needed versus what I assumed they wanted.
The breakthrough came when I stopped trying to impose my preconceived structure and started letting the work itself reveal the patterns.
Timing Your Sprint (And Why FOMO Can Be Fuel)
Interestingly, I made my biggest puzzle progress when half my industry was at a major research conference I'd reluctantly chosen to skip. (2025 = a travel timeout according to my accountant.) While my LinkedIn feed filled with networking photos and presentation lessons & quotes, I found myself in an unexpected productivity sprint, making a mad dash to finish those final sections.
This accidental timing taught me something valuable about business rhythms. We often feel like we need to be "on" constantly—at every event, following every trend, responding to every industry conversation. Sometimes the most productive work happens when you step back from the noise.
In my agency, I've learned to recognize these natural valleys in external activity as opportunities for deep work. While competitors are posting conference updates, I'm exploring new content niches to present to clients.
The puzzle became my antidote to FOMO—a reminder that meaningful progress often happens in quiet, unglamorous moments that won't make it to social media.
Every Piece Matters (Even the Boring Ones)
Around day 10, I was left with what seemed like hundreds of nearly identical purple pieces (no really, they were all the same flower but scattered across the design). No distinctive features, no obvious patterns—just variations of the same color that all looked frustratingly similar.
This is exactly like the unglamorous parts of running a research agency. Data cleaning isn't sexy. Formatting reports doesn't make for exciting social media content. Following up on invoices won't win any entrepreneurship awards.
But just like those purple puzzle pieces, these mundane tasks are what make the complete picture possible. The client sees the beautiful final research report, but it only exists because of all those "boring" pieces—the methodical data collection, the careful analysis, the precise documentation.
And also, sometimes you have to just try to see if something will work without knowing it’s outcome. Not ashamed to admit I did a lot of “flip and see” tactics with these pieces into finding their right homes – very similar to offering trial or mini projects with clients who don’t see an obvious benefit to our social media data methods.
The 100% Rule
The most satisfying part? I completed this puzzle entirely myself. Every single piece placed by my own hands, through my own problem-solving, with my own persistence.
This mirrors something I've learned about agency ownership: there's a fundamental difference between building something yourself and inheriting or buying something pre-built. When every system, every client relationship, every process has been developed through your own trial and error, you understand it at a level that creates unshakeable confidence.
Sure, it took longer than if I'd had help. Yes, there were moments of frustration when I couldn't find the piece I needed. But when I placed that final piece, I knew exactly how every part of the puzzle worked together—because I'd lived through the process of discovering each connection. (Ironically I was convinced at the very end that I was missing a piece only to find it hiding in plain sight on top of the puzzle.)
The View From Completion
Three years into running my agency, I'm still working on my "1,000-piece business puzzle." Some days I feel like I'm stuck on those frustrating pink pieces—similar challenges that all blur together. Other days, I find a key piece that makes a whole section click into place and other components quickly fall into place.
What the puzzle reminded me is that entrepreneurship isn't about having perfect conditions or getting it right the first time. It's about persistence, adaptability, and trusting that each small piece—even the boring ones—contributes to something larger.
The back pain was temporary. The puzzle is complete and displayed proudly on my shelf. The lessons learned are permanent and already improving how I approach both my business and my next 1,000-piece challenge.
Maybe it's time to upgrade to a proper puzzle table—and maybe it's time to finally invest in that better CRM system I've been putting off. After all, the right tools don't guarantee success, but they sure make the process more sustainable. But also – more 1,000 piece puzzles are absolutely not in my future until we have a bigger home, so I feel comfortable pacing and scaling my social media research business on my own time, too.
Finally - wins don’t last long. The feeling can be fleeting before moving on to the next work assignment. So while I did marvel at my work and document its completion and sat with the feelings of success, I cleaned up quickly to make space for the next hobby work break. Which will probably be a hyper fixation on making wax seals after finding this account 😂
