I was doing grocery shopping during the New Year holidays and the store had a lot of 1000 piece puzzle on sale for $11. My son had never done more than 100 pieces and I was like hey this seems interesting for him, so I bought one. We started working it on Jan13th and finished between 4 people on Jan25th. During the journey of finishing I saw a lot of similarities with complex engineering projects. I think everyone in engineering should do one of these and here are some of the things I learned. Underestimating the task : I grossly underestimated the task and amount of time it would take for my son to do it. Teamwork : After a day or two I realized my son lost interest, the whole family had to be involved to keep him motivated on it. Prep work : Like engineering projects, you need to do a lot of prep work like: Turn the pieces down Study the patterns Sort the pieces Divide and rule : Like engineering projects you need to pick some quick wins initially to get off the ground