Ever had to wait a couple of days to find out something important? It can be gut wrenching. To find out what may help people wait for this uncertain news psychologists st up a series of distraction experiments. One such study asked people to have their picture taken and then wait in a room to find out how attractive other people rated their picture. While waiting they were asked to play, Tetris, an online puzzle game that asks you to place tiles correctly before your time runs out. People were tasked to play at three different levels: easy, just difficult enough, and too difficult. Those playing the “just difficult enough” level reported feeling less negative about waiting to be told whether people thought they were attractive or not. It may be that by engaging your mind in a distracting enough task may help you focus less on the uncertain news coming.

Or it could also be that playing video games is just fun! I’m also curious if the music was on, because whenever I hear the sound track to Tetris I actually get a little nervous. Will I have enough time to figure out the puzzles!