The Productivity Lesson I Learned from Playing Sudoku
I don’t typically play a lot of games. It has been more than six months since I played any game on my phone. However, for the last few weeks I have been playing Sudoku with almost an addictive fervor. In this version of the game I have the choice of difficulty including easy, medium, hard, and expert. I can make three mistakes. Any additional mistakes require me to watch a short advertisement for other games, books, marketing systems, investment plans, etc.
To be completely transparent, I am not certain “why” I was playing this game. The game designers cleverly start each game with a banner that reads “keep your mind sharp”. Well, I do want to do that, so all the things I need to accomplish like writing my book, developing marketing plans, improving my coaching skills, writing and practicing meaningful presentations, and spending quality time with my family will need to wait until I sharpen my mind with several games of Sudoku. However, today I learned a valuable lesson from this game that has genuinely made me much sharper. I don’t know if I will play the game after today, but I am grateful to it for the lesson I learned.
For the last week I have exclusively been playing at the expert level. Playing at this level has required me to discover new techniques for finding the right answer but also at this level of play, sometimes the only option is to guess. I look for any opportunity to have a “sure thing” but there are very few “sure things” in expert Sudoku, even after employing the various solution-finding techniques that I have learned. Often, the best I can do is narrow it down to two choices and then I must take a 50-50 chance. I especially found this frustrating when I would make three or more incorrect guesses in a row, but I felt like a superhero when I would make three or more correct guesses in a row. The bottom line is this, there is no way to avoid the possibility of making an incorrect choice, but this is not the lesson I learned.
After accepting the inevitable fact that part of the game is making educated guesses after doing some intelligent work, I was able to complete the expert level puzzle with a best time of 11 minutes and 38 seconds. However, most of the time it took me 18 to 21 minutes to complete the puzzle after watching more than one commercial. This morning, I decided to intelligently find 50-50 choices and make my guess quickly without worrying about how many commercials I had to watch. Something happened.
My time dropped to no more than 11 minutes and 21 seconds with a best time of 6 minutes and 32 seconds. I also increased my feeling of decisiveness and decreased my feeling of frustration with incorrect guesses. Remarkably, I am not watching any more commercials than I was before. I am not making any more or fewer mistakes on average, but I am completing the task in half the time with a much greater sense of confidence.
It occurred to me that in my professional and personal life, I am often trying to find the “sure thing” before I decide, but I am just making an educated guess with a potential for mistakes. The fascinating thing about making a 50-50 guess is that either way, after you make the guess, you know the answer with absolute certainty. Most decisions in life are not necessarily a 50-50 choice, but almost every decision in life gives you enough hints to allow you to make an educated guess and you learn from every single guess you make. Becoming more productive in life professionally, relationally, physically, spiritually, or any other area, is about wisely making decisions that may be incorrect choices, but they always lead to learning. Don’t let your life be stuck by trying to always find the “sure thing”. Just like in Sudoku, sometimes the answer is obvious but sometimes you need to make a guess and learn. Create! Don’t Wait. Creating your life often requires you to learn from uncertain attempts and mistakes. The more you wisely make mistakes the more your wisdom grows.
Productivity requires guessing to learn.