One of the beautiful things about speed puzzling is that every puzzler can go at their own pace and set their own goals. I’ve seen several puzzlers post about doing a new 500-piece puzzle in under an hour. When I started four months ago, that seemed impossibly fast…but I’ve been working hard on improving myself, and I’d done a few new puzzles under 1:10. Breaking an hour no longer seemed out of reach.

And truth be told, a great deal of it is the puzzle. Even now, there are some 500 piece puzzles that are so challenging for me that I can’t do them in under two hours. But a week and a half ago, I did an “easy” puzzle and shocked myself by finishing in 56:59!

Once the competition was over, I checked the results and saw that I was only at the 42nd percentile. The median time was 54:54, so I actually performed worse than the majority of puzzlers. That didn’t diminish my joy at all! My goal to beat an hour wasn’t conditional. I’d learned so much since I started speed puzzling that breaking one hour wouldn’t have been possible a few months ago. This was something to truly celebrate!

There was one more event for me to compete in: another new 500-piece puzzle. Maybe I was extra-confident from the first one, but something clicked and I smoked it in 55:43!

When I looked at the results, I was surprised to see that I was at the 63rd percentile, several minutes ahead of the median time in the mid-1:01s. It was only four months ago where my competition times on 500-piece puzzles were consistently around the 15th percentile!

I’m telling you all of this not to brag (although I’m still so excited to break the one-hour barrier), but to emphasize that the competition for most of us should be mainly with ourselves. Set achievable goals, work toward them, and monitor your gradual improvement over time. And when you finally achieve a goal, blissfully celebrate it, then find your next goal to work toward.