When was the last time you did a puzzle? If you are like many adults, the answer may be “Not since I was a child.” But puzzles of all kinds can be great hobbies for kids or adults for several reasons.

It can be easy to fall into a couple of different traps in how you spend your time. One is feeling as though every single activity that you do must somehow be productive. The other is wasting hours scrolling social media or other sites with no clear intentions. While there is nothing wrong with being productive or catching up on your social media feeds, either of these done to excess can result in feeling overstimulated and restless, a sense that you can never quite turn your brain off and relax.

This is where puzzles come in. Puzzling can act as an almost meditative activity, giving you a focus and a sense of calm as you become absorbed in what you are doing. But puzzling is not just about relaxing; there is a real feeling of accomplishment as you progress and finally finish whatever puzzle you are working on. The effort requires creative problem-solving, which can help stimulate your brain and may even help to ward off some of the mental effects of aging. Working on puzzles can also give a pleasurable dopamine hit.

Puzzles aren’t just about being on your own, though, and this is another reason why puzzling is a great hobby. You can do them by yourself, but they are also an excellent social activity, a way to come together with family or friends to solve a problem and have fun.

When you think about puzzles, the first thing that comes to mind might be jigsaw puzzles. These are part of a larger group known as mechanical puzzles, meaning that you work with physical items as opposed to word or number games. The Rubik’s Cube and puzzles based on a similar concept are also examples of mechanical puzzles.

If these don’t appeal to you, there are plenty of other puzzle types that may. Logic puzzles, for example, include the popular Sudoku, where you work with multiple three-by-three grids containing some of the numbers between one and nine. You have to figure out the missing squares without any duplication in your columns or rows. Other logic puzzles involving numbers and grids include Hitori, Nurikabe, and Skyscraper. However, not all logic puzzles involve pen and paper. Riddles and other brain teasers are also examples.

If you like words better than numbers, you may enjoy crosswords more, or you might enjoy the fun of codebreaking with cryptograms. Anagrams, in which you move letters around to form new words, and word search puzzles are also popular examples.

Puzzling is a great reminder that activities don’t have to be productive to be worthwhile and that there’s plenty of fun to be had in old-fashioned pursuits. There are enough varieties to appeal to nearly everyone. If you have always thought of puzzling as something you left behind in childhood, you may be pleasantly surprised to rediscover how appealing these pastimes can be.