Jigsaw Puzzles And Self-Employment

How do you redeem the time? Especially when you are unable to leave your home.

If you are like my wife and daughters, you spend time doing every jigsaw puzzle in our house.

While I am not a fan of jigsaw puzzles, I read an email from Dan Miller that inspired me to think more about the connection between puzzles (in general) and starting the self-employment journey.

3 Similarities Between Jigsaw Puzzles and Starting Your Self-Employment Journey

A puzzle has many of the same benefits and processes as starting a journey.

1. Clarity of the picture AKA the end goal is key.
2. There are various ways to start but some ways are better than others.
3. You are not tied to one puzzle or type of work forever. You can end one and start another one.

Clarity Is Needed

The late Zig Ziglar said, “You can’t hit a target you cannot see, and you cannot see a target you do not have.”

The second habit that Stephen Covey covers in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People* is to “begin with the end in mind.”

Just like a jigsaw puzzle has a picture of the end goal (the completed puzzle should look like the box top), your life should have a goal that you target.

Starting Is Easy; Starting Right Is Harder

You can start a 1000-piece puzzle a number of ways. You can pick up a single piece and compare it with all the others until you get a match. That will work but that could take up to 999 attempts. That is not very practical.

That is the “hope and prayer” approach some take to starting their journey to self-employment. They jump in and hope and pray to figure it out.

They don’t have clarity or a goal. They believe they can figure things out fast enough before they “crash and burn.”

A better approach to putting the jigsaw puzzle together requires that you start grouping pieces to determine what fits together. This especially is helpful in creating the outer edge. Once you have your square or rectangle connected, filling the rest of the puzzle is much easier.

Setting boundaries at the beginning of your journey to self-employment is key.

I have met plenty of people that wanted to do “something on my own” but were not sure what they wanted to do.

Sometimes the easiest approach is to start listing what you do not want to do.

As you write out the things you don’t want to do, you can start grouping them together like you would the pieces of the puzzle.

I like order and processes. A Subway franchise has order and a process. Subway tells you how to layout your store, the food counter, etc.

I do not like being in crowds or dealing with the general public.

Guess what that rules out? You guessed it, I will not be running a Subway franchise.

Refresh and Restart

You don’t have to stay with one puzzle or one self-employment vision forever.

My wife and daughters spent a good amount of time working on a puzzle. After they completed it, the puzzle sat on the card table in our living room for a few days. They admired it. So did I.

After a few days, they would decide to break it apart and put it back into the box. Once they did that, they were free to start another one.

I have been a web designer since 2007 and went full-time in 2012.

As 2020 approached, I began to pivot my self-employment situation.

I did not break up the web design job and jump into something new. I started the transition from ESGgraphics.com to EricSGale.com over the course of several months.

My new adventure will allow me to coach people on how to become full time self-employed. My wife has been doing it since 2003, and I joined her in 2012.

Will you join us?

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