When All the Pieces Pile Up… Life as Tetris

In a world of opportunity, a few small success moments or experiences can open up limitless future adventures. While this seems exciting, and as if something most would dream of, it can be daunting at times with so many choices crashing down at once.

Which path is best?
What’s the best next move?
Do I try to fit in all things coming at me and see how it turns out?

I read an article a while back by Tor Bair, and he says, “Your life is Tetris. Stop playing it like chess.” Tor goes on to explain four reasons we should play the game of life like Tetris, not chess. You will certainly want to check out his full post at the end of this article.  

For my reflections, I’d like to expound on life as Tetris–especially when to comes to opportunities and decision-making. For example, we can’t see the whole game board of life and carefully choose which move will help us win. Likewise, we have no idea what’s behind each “life piece” that lies ahead. Rather, we get one puzzle piece at a time, and it’s coming fast! At that point, we are left with one choice–make the best decision we can at that moment. However, the results of these decisions often vary.

1.) Sometimes we succeed. Everything fits into place, and we are ready and waiting for the new opportunities to drop down.

2) Other times, we learn how to manipulate the piece to better fit our situation. We realize our last attempt at an opportunity that size didn’t fit just right, so we tweak our approach and make room.

3) Yet, there are times when all of the puzzle pieces pile up, and nothing fits in place. It’s a dog pile of hopeful opportunities for which we were not quite ready. Maybe they came too fast, or maybe we needed room to grow and learn before they would fit into our world.

Whatever the result, we call the shots, and we race against ourselves.

One of my favorite passages from Tor Bair‘s article is,

“In Tetris, you’re only playing against time and the never-ending flow of pieces from top to bottom. The mindset is internally focused — you are challenging yourself to correctly manipulate a random stream of inputs into an orderly configuration. There’s no final boss. No blame to assign.”

In fact, he goes on to say,

“There is no absolute right or wrong move that a certain opponent can punish. And your score can increase to infinity, if you just push yourself harder. Your life score can increase slowly or quickly, depending on how hard you push yourself.”

The best part about life, like Tetris, is we get multiple chances to be successful. 

“You can’t allow your goals to be compromised, no matter the pace at which you move. You must control your own mind, your own behaviors, and your own time.”

When the pieces pile up, and the screen goes blank…

LOOK UP!

More opportunities are on the way; it’s decision-making time!

And that, my friends, is LIFE.

Let’s encourage our colleagues, our students, our families and our friends to play life like Tetris. There’s a limitless supply of opportunities coming from above, and it’s up to us to decide how they fit into our world.

Thanks for the inspiration Tor Bair. While I have no clue how to play chess, I can totally relate to life as Tetris.

Click here for the full article Your Life is Tetris. Stop Playing Like Chess by Tor Bair.

via GIPHY