Over 20 years ago, I was very excited to have a short cruise on an international cruise liner. The trip was all expenses paid, but the catch was, we had to work. I was selling gemstones on the ship with my co-workers. We boarded the ship at Freemantle, Western Australia, stopped over in Adelaide, Hobart and finally made our last stop in Sydney.
The trip was not what I imagined it to be. I imagined people lazing by the pool, dancing until all hours of the night, and generally having a great time. Well, the pool was not in use, there wasn’t so much entertainment, and we also weren’t making much in the way of gemstone sales, either.
This was a Japanese cruise ship catering to the elderly and wealthy Japanese clientele. I was hired for my fluency in Japanese, but the other salespeople and I took a bit of a break from our work and mingled with the passengers. We spent a lot of time in the library helping an old lady with her jigsaw. She was spending hours and hours putting together one of those big 1000 piece puzzles.
Apparently, jigsaws are very good for preventing cognitive decline. Research was conducted on 100 adults over 50, where one group was engaged in jigsaw puzzles for a period of 30 days and the other was not. They found that the jigsaw puzzle group had an increase in visuospatial cognition compared to the group that did not engage in jigsaw puzzle activities.
It got me thinking about the benefits of having strong visuospatial cognition. Apparently, there are many, including better driving skills, a stronger ability to navigate stairs, and it also helps you to be a better reader. I am hoping it will help me to become a better trail runner. I might be able to navigate all of the bumps on the road a bit better.
Over the last week, I finally got out a jigsaw that my partner and I have been avoiding. It is a 1000-piece puzzle as well. We have been putting the time in every night to get it done. It has been great to achieve something together, and now that I have researched all of the benefits of jigsaw puzzles, I hope to do more. I think that it is making my mind sharper, increasing my confidence to achieve goals, and helping me to share these goals.
I think there is another great benefit that I discovered from my jigsaw puzzle and that is it helps me to escape. I stop thinking about whether I had a bad or a good day. I forgot about any problems that I may have and just focus on the puzzle. Only one problem here is that there is also a potential to forget to sleep. You have to keep an eye on the time.
The feeling of pushing that piece of cardboard smoothly into the right place is a great feeling for some reason. It is a bit of an addiction that is actually doing me good rather than harm. I will stop ranting now and get back to the puzzle.
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6174231/
