Why Time is Unforgiving: Lessons From Tetris Part 3

Written by: Brad Pedersen

Over the past two weeks, I've shared lessons that Tetris can teach us about life. 

First, that you can't control the blocks you get, only how you place them. Second, that life and order matter, and some opportunities have an expiration date. If you missed either of those, you can catch up HERE and HERE.

Today, I want to share the third and final lesson, one that explains why life feels like it's moving faster the older we get, and why that should influence how we make decisions.

When Alexey Pajitnov first created Tetris in 1984, the game moved slowly; both in its design and its distribution. It crept through the Soviet Union on floppy disks, passed hand to hand, then gradually found its way beyond the Iron Curtain. The early gameplay mirrored its global trajectory: thoughtful, methodical, patient. 

Then in 1989, a single decision changed everything.  

Nintendo was set to bundle Super Mario Land with its new handheld console, the Game Boy. This move would have targeted their traditional audience of young boys.  But a software publisher named Henk Rogers saw it differently. He believed Tetris had universal appeal; cutting across age, gender, and culture and he urged Nintendo to rethink their strategy, saying to the leadership team:

“If you want to sell Game Boys to boys, bundle it with Mario. But if you want to sell Game Boys to everyone, bundle it with Tetris.”

Nintendo listened. 

Overnight, Tetris became a phenomenon. What had been a slow, underground ripple became a tidal wave of global adoption. Millions of people were suddenly hooked on falling blocks.

And here’s the genius: acceleration wasn’t just a product of distribution; it is woven into the very fabric of the game. Tetris starts slow; gentle, forgiving, even meditative. But with each level, the blocks fall faster, the space gets tighter and the margin for error shrinks.  What once felt like a leisurely puzzle becomes a test of nerve, speed, and precision.

Life is built the same way.

We begin with long days and seemingly limitless possibilities where time feels infinite. But then careers begin, our families grow, the responsibilities stack up and the speed of life increases, whether we’re ready or not.

That’s why it’s crucial to learn how to play the game while it’s slow, because life, like Tetris, always speeds up, and when it does, the decisions we make have more gravity on our trajectory.

When Time Starts Moving Faster

In Tetris, as we clear more lines and advance through levels, the blocks start falling faster. The consequences of a bad placement become immediate and often irreversible.

Life works much the same way, and there's actually a scientific explanation for why it feels that way. Psychologists refer to it as "time perception acceleration." When we're young, everything is new, and our brains form rich, lasting impressions. These novel experiences stretch our sense of time. However, as we age and settle into routines, fewer new memories are formed and as a result time begins to feel like it's speeding up.

We explored this idea in a past newsletter, where we talked about the power of creating dense, memorable experiences. You can read it HERE, where we share practical ways to intentionally slow the sense of time speeding up.

Neuroscientist David Eagleman explains it this way: "Time is this rubbery thing. It stretches out when you really turn your brain resources on, and it shrinks down when you say, oh, I got this, everything is as expected."

Our teens and 20s feel endless. Each year is packed with new experiences, new relationships, new challenges that create lasting memories. Our 30s move faster, but we're still building and there's time to course-correct. But by our 40s and 50s, time accelerates in a way that's genuinely disorienting. 

We blink and our kids are grown, we look up and our parents require care. The blocks are falling so fast that we're just trying to keep up instead of being intentional about placement. This of course is only our perception; but that is also what is our lived reality. 

The game is speeding up, and it will continue to speed up for the rest of your life.

‍The Weight of Every Decision

This is why awareness and intentionality become even more critical as we age. When we're young and the game is slow, we can afford to be careless with a few blocks. We have time to recover from mistakes. 

But as the game speeds up, every decision carries greater weight. A block placed wrong later in life creates a gap we might not have time to recover from in the future. The relationships we neglect in our 50s might not be there in our 60s. The health we ignore in our 40s becomes the crisis we face in our 50s. The important values that we keep postponing eventually become the regret we carry to the end.

This means being ruthlessly honest about where our time and energy are going right now. It requires asking ourselves whether the way we're playing the game today is building the life we actually want, or just creating gaps we'll regret later on.

‍Learning to Say No

Warren Buffett once said, "The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything."

In Tetris, that means you can't obsess over fitting every piece into every space. Sometimes, you skip a block and sometimes, you let one go by. Not every piece needs to be placed as some blocks are distractions dressed up as opportunities. When we treat everything as important, we will sacrifice what is truly essential in living a fulfilling life.

I have come to realize that this is one of the hardest lessons for accomplished business leaders to learn. We've built our success on saying yes–to opportunities, to growth, to challenges, to more. But as the game speeds up, the strategy that got us here will destroy us if we don't adapt.

I've had to learn this the hard way. 

For many years, I said yes to almost every opportunity that came my way. New ventures, new partnerships, new projects. I was building, always building, convinced that more was better and having FOMO about any opportunity. 

However as the blocks started falling faster, I realized I was creating gaps in the things that ultimately mattered most for my life. My health was good but not great; time invested into discovery and adventures were absent; and my most important relationships were either superficial or strained. I was succeeding in business but failing at life.

It wasn’t until I adopted a clear framework that I could start saying “no” to distractions disguised as opportunities. That shift made the space for me to build wealth that goes far beyond a monetary measurement. 

One tool that has helped is the “regret minimization filter: imagining our 80-year-old self asking, “Will I say I’m glad I did, or I wish I had?” When we align decisions with purpose, the game doesn’t slow down, but choosing the right moves gets much simpler.

Finishing the Game Well

Take a moment right now and look honestly at the game of life that you're playing. 

Are you feeling the acceleration? 

Are you noticing how fast the blocks are falling compared to ten years ago? 

Which opportunities are you saying yes to that are actually distractions from what matters most? 

Over the past three weeks, we've explored three truths hidden within the simple game of Tetris:

‍First, you can't control the blocks you get, only how you place them. Life will hand you pieces you don't want, but you always get to choose your response.

‍Second, life and order matter, and some opportunities have an expiration date. Getting the timing right means recognizing what season you're in and placing the right blocks now, not later.

‍Third, the game speeds up as you progress, so your decisions matter more. Time accelerates whether you're ready or not, and the strategy that worked in your 30s will fail you in your 50s if you don't adapt.

These aren't just lessons from a video game, they're principles for life.  The game is still going and the blocks are still falling; faster than they were yesterday. You still have moves to make that will determine how your game ends.

The question is: are you going to keep playing the same way you've always played, or are you ready to adapt to the acceleration and build something you'll be proud of when the end of the game draws near.  

Because here's the truth: the game always ends for all of us. Tetris doesn't go on forever, and neither does life. The question isn't whether the game will end, but whether we'll make the necessary decisions, choosing the right blocks to finish the game well.

‍

♻️ **Share with someone who needs to see this today!**

‍

And follow **Brad Pedersen** and **Vijay Krishnan** for more LinkedIn content like this!

‍