Just a game or an efficiency lesson?
Ahh! Who wants to talk about business
today? I’m out. I wrote this column about video games and
sent it to my editors to see if they would notice.
If you are reading this, then guess what?
It fell through the cracks and this drycleaning business trade
journal published an article about a video game instead of
something business related. Cool, huh?
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Who would've thought that a game with a
simple concept — to stack falling blocks of geometric
shapes so that they form straight lines — would become so
popular with men and women of all ages? Pajitnov did, but the
idea that Tetris could become a pop culture phenomenon did not
occur to him immediately.
In 1985, Alexey Pajitnov developed Tetris
as part programming exercise and as something fun to do. He got
the idea for Tetris from a popular puzzle game called
Pentamino. When Pajitnov saw Pentamino, he thought about adding
a time element to gameplay, so he added the twist of having the
blocks drop.
To play Tetris, a player may manipulate a
falling block with the arrow keys on a computer keyboard. This
gives the player a chance to make the most efficient use of any
particular block. Inefficient use of a block is when gaps are
formed, like the gaps in the Figure 1.
If the block is allowed to fall
haphazardly, little will be accomplished. If thought and skill
are allowed to play a part in the game, rows of squares will
form and, therefore, rows completed. If you are very efficient,
skillful and a little bit lucky, you may complete two, three or
even four lines at once. That is as efficient as you can get,
and you will rack up some serious points.
I was just walking through a concourse in
Terminal C at Logan International Airport in Boston. I happened
by the barber shop where a customer sat quietly while the
barber cut his hair. A minute later, I spied a well-dressed man
getting his shoes shined. Many stores sell or rent DVD movies.
Why is there a barber at the airport? Why a shoe shine stand?
Maybe you understand the connection with movies. We have always
gotten a haircut. We don’t have to get a trim at the
airport.
When I first got a cell phone, I found
that I was getting more done than ever. In fact, sometimes, I
find that it is easier to bang out a bunch of phone calls if I
just get into my car and go somewhere. I make a few phone calls
along the way. Why? A couple of weeks ago, I was conducting a
one-on-one management class. Actually, it was two-on-one; my
client and I were trying to get through to his manager. My
client’s cell phone rang and he said that he had to take
this call. He left the room for what I figured would be a
couple of minutes. I seized the opportunity to pick up my cell
phone and return a voice mail message that had been left for me
earlier. I figured that this, too, would take a couple of
minutes.
The DVDs, the barber, the shoe shine boy
and the cell phone are forcing you to “play Tetris”
with the things that you want to get done. Each phone call that
you need to make and every task that you need to accomplish
fits neatly and maybe even perfectly into the available time.
You are tetris-ing a task (a geometric block is the metaphor)
into a time slot (the space in the stack of blocks) that is
just big enough to handle that task.
I had two minutes and efficiently stuck
in a task that takes two minutes. It makes sense to get a
haircut or a shoe shine at the airport because that chore
effectively uses the available time. DVD movies? A two-hour
flight is wasted time, unless you jamb in a two-hour movie that
you’ve been wanting to see.
You will accomplish so much more in your
personal and professional life if you learn to
“Tetris” your time. The only word of warning is
that you be realistic about your time estimates. This concept
will be counter-productive if you have 60 available minutes and
you try to wrestle in a three-hour task. Doing this will cause
you to “bang and hang” or fail to thoroughly
complete chores and ultimately your to-do list will be a mess.
So the first step is to master this
concept yourself. That done, teach it to everyone of your
subordinates. Your manager, your secretary, your spotter, your
pants presser, your shirt presser.
Is your productivity down? Are you
blaming your shirt unit for poor productivity? Can’t get
over 40 shirts per hour? Paying overtime? All of these issues
are rooted in an inability to Tetris individual tasks (even 30
second tasks) into equally sized time slots.
It is a key to being efficient. Really.
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