Over the years I’ve played a lot of video games – especially in my teens, of course. Though, with years life gradually required attention to other things, as adulthood inevitably brought more stress and responsibilities to dedicate time and brainpower to. With the big boy salary also changed my habits and ways to disconnect.

Somehow, of all games – Tetris stuck around in my weekly game rotation for over 2 decades now. And I know there are good reasons for that.

(My) history of Tetris

Tetris originated in the USSR in the mid-1980s but gained much more popularity in capitalist countries like the US and Japan (you could guess that IBM PCs weren’t a big thing across the Soviet “consumer market”).

Being one of the earlier arcade-type games, Tetris quickly gained pop culture icon status. It got so famous that the game was bundled with Nintendo’s Game Boy console in North America and (Western) Europe. In these two regions, along with Japan, this version of the game became a best-seller and must-have title for anyone owning the handheld.

As the Iron Curtain came crashing down a few years later, Tetris became more accessible to players across the former Socialist bloc in Eastern Europe. To many people where I’m from in particular their first experience playing the game was using this low-tech device that was somewhat affordable by local standards:

My first encounter with Tetris (that I recall) came with Java-enabled phones in mid-2000s. I would play Tetris during recess or on weekends religiously, learning about T-spins and other kinds of techniques to get higher scores or win against opponents (some of you would be surprised to know that Tetris has multiplayer modes, quite often online too).

In fact, I am convinced that I owe some of my professional success to this game, and here’s why:

Tetris is good for efficiency and mental health

In 2009, a study on the cortical thickness of 26 adolescent girls’ brains before and after playing Tetris was conducted. The results proved the increase of cortical thickness, which is a sign of having more grey matter. Essentially, if you manage to get your child addicted to Tetris in their formative years, that may give them competitive edge in brainpower.

Another study, conducted in 2017, claims that playing Tetris during the first week after a traumatic event helps patients tackle their PTSD, with intrusive memories dimishing quicker as the game takes up the brain’s resources.

On top of that, this research paper from 2014 concludes that playing Tetris decreases the intensity of cravings, so you know what to do next time you decide to go on a diet.

These are just few of the many studies conducted on the health benefits of playing Tetris, surely with more to come in the future. The game remains highly popular, and thanks to its lack of any storyline it’s quite easy to dedicate even a few minutes a day to it – just to train your brain a little bit.

But is being good at Tetris a transferrable skill?

As an Operations Specialist, my work resembles playing Tetris in a way. I have to keep an eye on several issues at once, often combining them in a way that makes them resolve one another, because there’s never time to tackle one thing at a time. And that with new variables each day.

The major difference from ops work and playing Tetris is that I make a living doing the former, while doing something in essence very similar to the latter. And while being good at the game is not a business skill in particular, in the ever-changing professional environment it might help your children connect the dots among the daily chaos once they enter employment.