Domino is a popular game that originated in the Western world in the mid-18th century and has been played throughout the world. It is played with a set of dominoes consisting of a group of rectangular tiles, each having a number printed on its ends. These numbers vary between 0 and 6, which makes the tile unique.
The game was first recorded in Italy, where it became a popular pastime in the 1750s. It spread rapidly throughout Austria, southern Germany and France during the 18th century. The word domino did not appear in any writing before 1771, when it was recorded in the Dictionnaire de Trevoux.
Players play the dominoes with their hands, placing a tile onto the table so that it touches either one end or both of a chain of tiles known as a domino chain. The domino chain gradually grows in length as tiles are played.
There are many different games that can be played with dominoes. The most common in the West are block-and-draw games, where a set of dominoes is shuffled facedown on a table and then drawn at random. In a standard game, the player who draws the highest domino wins.
Another popular type of game is layout, where the goal is to place a domino so that it is adjacent to an already-placed domino, or to make a certain total on the domino chain. These games can be played with a single domino or a domino set with several hundred tiles.
A domino set can be a variety of different sizes and shapes, and it is possible to find small ones made from wood or ceramics that are shaped like animals and people. These are popular with children, and they can be used to create elaborate patterns.
When a single domino is tipped over, it causes the next domino to tip over, and so on. This chain reaction can be extremely exciting, especially if it involves a large group of dominoes.
This can be an excellent mental model for many business initiatives, including those that require a lot of planning and execution. It can help you avoid the “flash in the pan” syndrome that leads so many projects to fail prematurely.
It can also be a good way to keep yourself focused on a specific task. For example, Lee Schwab, founder of Bethlehem Steel, often used this approach in order to ensure that he could focus on the most important tasks for the company every day.
He had a lot of other things that needed to be done, but he always prioritized his top priority and stayed on it until completion. By doing so, he was able to build his company into the largest independent producer of steel in the world.
In addition, he was able to avoid the pitfalls that can lead to disaster in any project, such as focusing on a small set of tasks and neglecting others. By focusing on the most important tasks and ensuring that he completed them before moving on to other ones, he was able to successfully complete his projects and turn around his company in record time.