Who knew I learned business skills from playing Tetris?

Tetris, an addictive puzzle video game that launched in the late eighties, was a game I and many others loved playing. It was easy to play, minimal instructions needed. And yet, it was gratifying to play and so you kept coming back to play it. As the pieces fell faster and faster and they stacked up higher and higher, your heart rate elevated and your anxiety grew as you tried to move faster and faster to make the pieces fit so you could clear as much of the screen as you could and get back to a calm place.

Fast forward many years (I won’t share how many), I find myself staring at my calendar in Outlook and feeling overwhelmed as a new two-hour meeting has popped up on my calendar. The meeting invite includes many people, including senior leaders. I decide I can’t move this meeting or decline this meeting. So, I accept it, which means now, I have to play “Schedule Tetris” to move three other meetings.

I look to see the schedules of the other attendees. I look at my calendar and try to recommend the best spot for everyone and the meeting topic. Of course, my recommendation now clashes with another meeting, and so I have to move that one.

And, this is a lot of my day. I play “Schedule Tetris” professionally as new meetings pop up or as I find I need work time or personal time. Who knew all those years ago I learned how to make meetings fit together to make a schedule by playing Tetris?

And that is the difference between gamified learning and a game. Gamified learning adds game elements to make the learning experience engaging. Many learning designers like to create gamified simulations, as the simulation gives you active practice with the key skills in real-world scenarios. The gamification part elevates the feeling of the simulation to be game like.

A game, on the other hand, doesn’t replicate real life, and yet, still gives you an environment to practice the key skills. From playing Tetris, I learned how to make different size and shape pieces fit together. Similarly, meetings come in different time lengths. When moving meetings around, I have to find where that meeting could fit.

From playing Tetris, I learned how to manage my anxiety. Some days, I’m constantly moving meetings and feeling the stress of how to make it all fit within the work day, week, month, or year. And when I can find that right fit where I can get the meetings essential for that week scheduled AND have work time within the workday, I feel calm.

From playing Tetris, I learned how to make hard decisions quickly. As I saw multiple pieces fall, I had to decide where to put the current piece so there was room for the following pieces. Every day, usually multiple times per day, I have to decide which meeting to prioritize where on my schedule so I have room for all the essential meetings and tasks.

Games are another modality in our toolkit as learning experience designers that can be engaging and still provide the hands-on practice of the key skills. The key piece in turning the game into a learning experience is in the reflection.

As I was moving a meeting for the fourth time this month, I had the a-ha moment that managing my schedule was like playing Tetris. I reflected on the skills I used to play and succeed at Tetris, and realized I applied those skills to managing my calendar.

Reflection time is a key moment in a learning experience for learners to think about their insights from the game and the skills they had to use to play the game, and most importantly, what did they have to DO to win the game.

Guided reflection can prompt learners to consider how those skills and behaviors (i.e., the things they did) could apply to their life and job. And this is when they have an authentic a-ha moment on how to apply the behaviors to improve how they work and live!

So the next time you are playing that video game, board game, or any game, take a moment to reflect on why you enjoy the game and what do you need to be able to do to win the game? And how can those behaviors help you to succeed at the Grand Game of Life?