A kinder way…a lesson from the New York Times Connections game

Why pushing on isn’t always the best move

How do you feel when you force yourself to do something when it’s become frustrating? 

When you’re tired and a challenge starts to feel too much, how do you respond?

What do you do when you find yourself staring at something you’re working on without making any progress?

Do you push harder, double down, or berate yourself, and then wonder why you feel drained?

Yesterday’s New York Times Connections puzzle gave me a useful lesson about efforting, one I’ve had many times before but felt good to remind myself of. 

I tackle the NYT puzzle collection each morning - Wordle, Spelling Bee, The Mini, and Connections. They are the perfect level of challenge, time, and difficulty, but there’s also no real significance if I manage to solve them all, or not. 

I usually do Connections last in my little sequence, and the puzzle yesterday had me stumped pretty early. I got one group but then had a couple of misses. I could feel the frustration, the annoyance that I wasn’t finding it easy, and after one more failed grouping, I thought to myself that I’d just give up. After all, what did it matter if I got it wrong?

But then another little wise voice piped up - the one I’m trying to pay more attention to lately. It said, “Why don’t you just take a break? Put it down for now and come back to it later?”

So I did. 

Half an hour later, when I picked up my phone, there was the puzzle staring at me as I’d left it, and I easily saw the right solutions. In about 20 seconds, I felt the brief triumph at having cracked it.

The break is what made it happen.

I offer this to anyone who’s working through something when the mental gas tank is low. 

When you know that a rest or a break would be good, but you keep pushing through. 

When your inner driver gives you a seriously unhelpful message like, “You have to finish this now or else there will be consequences.” 

To that voice, I like to think it could be helpful to channel a little bit of the beloved character Nessa from the BBC show, Gavin and Stacey, and respond, “Oh, get off my back!”

Of course my puzzle example is low stakes, but it was truly so much easier once I’d had that little break. Once I gave my mind a chance to release the tension and pressure that had started to build ever so slightly, and which likely may have been hindering me from finding the answer.

So go for a walk, even a short one. 

Wander to your coffee area or kitchen and give your mind a new job to do, even for 5 minutes. 

Even just break your gaze and turn away from your screen, not to check out from the situation, but to be able to check back in, refreshed. 

I hope you’ll find the joy in the break and to see what opens up when you take the pressure off. 

p.s. I found a site where you can create your own Connections puzzles - very cool: https://connections.swellgarfo.com The site creator also has a lovely album of gorgeous piano music: https://open.spotify.com/album/459LNcGUT36Q1xBRZJSHpT?si=XDj6wdj2SBuHAamCWmp0ZA