Describe Your Tetris Effect

The Tetris Effect occurs when people devote so much time and attention to an activity that it begins to pattern their thoughts, mental images, and dreams. It takes its name from the video game Tetris.

People who played Tetris for a prolonged amount of time could find themselves thinking about ways different shapes in the real world can fit together, such as the boxes on a supermarket shelf, the buildings on a street, or hallucinating pieces being generated and falling into place on an invisible layout. In this sense, the Tetris effect is a form of habit. They might also dream about falling tetrominos when drifting off to sleep or see images of falling tetrominos at the edges of their visual fields or when they close their eyes. In this sense, the Tetris effect is a form of hypnagogic imagery.

So do you experience Tetris Effect in your life as a software developer? I know I do. Share!ter

Comments

[Ben Halpern]

The book Algorithms to Live By is definitely relevant in this conversation.

[Jacob Herrington (he/him)]

Thanks for sharing, going on my reading list.

[diek]

Instabuy

[Weekly Typed]

I just bought the audiobook version yesterday, and I'm loving it.

[Saulo Vargas]

What about Tetris Effect with Netflix marathons or videogames? 😂

[Ben Junya]

Absolutely.

Here's my personal formula for getting into "flow state" or "Tetris effect."

• Have a problem to solve with code
• Listen to one of the following:
  • Video game music (Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Undertale/Deltarune, something good)
  • J-pop (vocaloid stuff is my jam)
  • Anything future funk, future bass, electro-swing, etc.
• Noise cancelling headphones
• A container of water nearby
• (optional) coffee or some light stimulant

Once the stage is set, my mind does the following:

• What are the first few steps to solve this issue? Do I start by playing detective? Maybe I start writing new module? How about I write a test to account for this bug and the desired outcome?
• Start working on step 1. If step 2 is already established, do step 2.
• ONLY focus on accomplishing the task at hand. Nothing else matters. Facebook, Twitter, email, texts, and other notifications can all just go away.
• Continue until the task is done.
• Move the task to the CI build, next step, whatever.
• Grab the next thing to fix.
• Start over again. What's step 1? Find step one, execute, repeat.

Suddenly, 4 hours pass, and I'll feel awesome :).

Hope this helps!

[Fernando Costa]

Nothing like Sephiroth theme to pump yourself!

[Exequiel Beker]

Or the Orphan theme (Nascent Requiem), from FFXIII!

[Antonio Radovcic]

Since I started rock-climbing, I see more holds and nudges in everyday-life.

I dreamt of Angular a couple of times. Funny thing is I have no idea about Angular and never used it.

I was regularly afraid of being shot on the street during "Narcos"-binges.

[morgana]

Sometimes I'm so deep in my flow that when I go to sleep, I still dream in code. Literally. I find bugs, wake up thinking that can't be right so I go and check. Sure enough... bug. I fix it, and get back to sleep.

[diek]

I dream with bugs that don't even exist!

[andersjr1984]

I have been waking up in the middle of the night with creative fixes to problems that I encounter in React. I don't know if it is healthy, but I have fixed a quite a few problems that I have encountered.

[Rachel Soderberg]

I didn't realize this counted as the Tetris effect! I've never been asleep and thought in code, but it's not uncommon for me to be doing something trivial like showering or falling asleep and suddenly be hit with the solution to a problem I've been pondering for the last workday or two.

[morgana]

It's definitely a useful manifestation of it :D

[diek]

My tetris effect is trying to parallelize almost everything i do in my life, if i want a coffee and a sandwitch i cannot stay infront the coffee machine or the toaster waiting them to finish, i often think how to use efficiently the waiting times. Call me crazy xD

[Cécile Lebleu]

Good one! In those very short free moments, I like to stretch. Most us devs are under-exercising anyway, so it’s usually worth it. Stretching the back, wrists, arms, neck, and doing some quick strength exercises like squats can really help energize me when I’m waiting for the water to boil! And if you want to go the extra-nerd way, you could count repetitions in binary or awkward percentages. 0 squat, 1 squat, 10 squat, 11 squat, 100 squat, 101 squat, 110 squat... occupies both brain and body while waiting.

[Nicolus]

It's not only Tetris. Other notorious examples are Sim City, where you start seeing green/Yellow/Blue squares and roads when you close your eyes, and rhythm games (Dance Dance Revolution, Beatmania IIDX, Pop'n Music, Rockband...) where you see notes scrolling in front of your eyes even when not playing the game.

[Ben Sinclair]

DOOM. The number of dreams I used to have where I'd run down a corridor to the shop, then run down the aisles, then run back down another corridor to see my friend...

All doors took two or three attempts to get through with me missing the entrance and grunting.

Good times.

[Basti Ortiz]

My life changed when I learned HTML...

Since then, all I could see are <div>s. I literally see box models everywhere now. For example, I imagine piano keys as left-floated <div>s.

[Meghan (she/her)]

Ever since becoming good at programming, I can no longer look at the world and not feel like this picture..

[Elliot Derhay]

Strangely enough, I don't know if I've experienced this.

But I do naturally try to fit/stack things like boxes in a closet and dishes in/around the sink in a space-saving manner.

And as I finished the above sentence, I also realized that I did, in fact, use to play a ton of Tetris on my phone. Not sure how much influence that has had on how I organize, but I guess it could be a factor.