I enjoy puzzles of all kinds, from Sudoku to crosswords to old-fashioned jigsaw puzzles.

What I appreciate most about them is the way they illuminate the unfathomable complexities of the mind.

Specifically, they show me how much is happening in my brain without my conscious awareness.

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When I was a kid, I was just in awe of professional musicians. How do you get up on stage and play song after song and not mess up?

Well, I’m still in awe of professional musicians, but now I understand something fundamental: Most of the time, whatever they’re doing up there is as easy as driving around town or carrying on a conversation.

It takes a degree of effort and concentration, but it’s within the range of routine activities. They’re not pushing themselves so hard that they’re risking a train wreck in front of hundreds or thousands of people. They’re doing something that they can already reliably do.

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These days, I’m learning how to manage projects.

This is not a well-developed skill for me. I’m good at managing a process — something repeatable that can be refined over time — and I’ve had a lot of experience dealing well with novel situations and improvising on the fly. My weakness is one-time, short-term endeavors with a beginning, middle, and end. Projects. Yeah, those.

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The elementary school I attended had a series of playgrounds made mostly of tires in interesting configurations.

Back in the olden days, when multiple recesses each day were standard, there was a separate playground for the kindergarteners, another for the first and second graders, and another for the third and fourth graders.

One of my classmates, who went on to become my best friend, remembers, at age five, peering through the chain link fence that separated the kindergarten playground from that of the first and second graders. Gazing at the older kids at play (So worldly! So sophisticated!), she said to herself sorrowfully, “I’ll never make it.”

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Jerry Seinfeld, when asked about his method for success in comedy, shared a very simple strategy: He wrote new material every day. In order to accomplish this, he drew a big red X on his wall calendar for every day he wrote. A day without an X became unthinkable.

“Don’t break the chain!” he said. In other words, keep that streak going — do whatever it takes to earn that X.

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