I hope that you enjoyed your holidays and your time off.  During my break I had the chance to play some video games, so video games will be the inspiration behind our series to start the year.  We will start with Tetris and the importance of building correctly from the beginning.

I have always loved Tetris and used to play it with my mom when I was a kid.  In case you’ve never played, Tetris is a game where different sized blocks descend from the top.  Your job is to stack those blocks in neat rows.  If you stack them neatly and complete a full horizontal line, that row of blocks disappears and you get points.  The longer you play, the faster the blocks descend, and sooner or later everything is moving so fast you are unable to stack things correctly.  Once the blocks have been stacked incorrectly and reach the top of the screen, you lose.  If you look at the picture on the right, you can see that things aren’t going so well for our player.

What if I told you Tetris and life are basically the same thing?  Tetris and life are about building correctly AND intentionally.  Both are about ensuring you build the right foundation, in the right way, so you can adjust as blocks (or life’s challenges) come at you faster and faster and faster.  In Tetris and life the difference between surviving the onslaught of challenges and losing all comes down to how well you built when you started.  This could refer to building relationships, marketing strategies, brands, finances, and anything else in life.

Looking back at 2019, I’m proud of what I accomplished at work.  With that said, I know there’s room for improvement.  As I look back I realize that if I would have spent the time to build some of the right foundations, some of the challenges I faced would have been easier to overcome.  If I would have done a better job of pausing to look ahead, I could have seen those obstacles before they came crashing down on me.  Seeing these obstacles would have given me time to grab them, pivot them, and place them like Tetris blocks instead of them getting slammed into the middle of my world messing stuff up.  Did any of you feel this way about last year? 

The challenge: Are you building the right foundation to handle life as it throws pieces at you faster and faster?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry