Why Solving a Daily Sudoku Puzzle Is Good for You
One a day. That's the bit that actually stuck for me. Why it might be enough.
I don't think you could say it's like a daily walk to keep your mind fresh but some sort of regime is important. I'd do puzzles occasionally but probably wouldn't do them every day. Now I do one every day with my morning coffee. The puzzles are the same but the regime is different.
It only took 5 to 15 minutes. That's all. It fit into my coffee break or right before I went to sleep. It never felt like homework which is why I think I kept doing it. If it took a full hour I would have given up.
After a couple weeks, I didn't really spend a lot of time thinking about where I was looking. Instead, coins and keys would just appear in my line of sight. I'm not sure when I stopped being quite as slow, but I seemed to be picking things up more quickly than before.
Finishing a project doesn't change much. It doesn't make everything better. It doesn't solve all of the problems that feel insurmountable. But on the days that nothing else seems to shift, something did. And let me tell you, small wins are not small. They are a very big deal.
I linked mine to my coffee time. Some folks will tell you that you should link it to lunch time or bedtime, it really doesn't matter where you link it. Just find something you already do and keep the thing with links near that activity. It is so much harder to remember to "do it sometime" and remember to put in the steps and actions for that activity.