Here I am, once again realising I’ve lost my way in the past 6 months.
Moving in a direction full speed, convinced it was right, until I realize it and go: what have I been thinking?
Until recently, I always felt tremendous guilt after such a period. It felt like I was wasting my life, moving in a direction that isn’t fully me.
Now, I feel different.
I finally realized getting off track is absolutely normal. It is part of life’s journey.
If you ever got off track with your chess training and got slightly frustrated with yourself, this one is for you.
But to be very honest with you, it is mostly a reminder for myself.
The Illusion of Perfect
In my head, things were very simple.
There is a clear direction that is “ideal” for most areas of my life. Taking it is correct, everything else a mistake.
Just like in a tactical position, there is one correct solution, and any other move is a mistake.
And looking back, seeing one move being +10, and all others at best equal, one feels stupid to not have seen it.
It seems so obvious!
Here is where this illusion breaks apart.
- Life isn’t solvable, there are no alternative life paths you can objectively compare. “Good or bad” are mostly interpretations, not truths like in a concrete chess position. Nobody knows how another decision might have played out.
- We aren’t born with 3500 life Elo and can expect ourselves to get the “right” answer every single time. The only way to get there (or at least a little closer) is to learn from the many mistakes we’ll inevitably make along the way.
So here is how my thinking has shifted on this.
Instead of thinking of one ideal life path, and everything else as a mistake, I now think of the life path as a fluid moving stream of decisions.
In hindsight, some will seem good, some worse. Those who seem bad are mostly decisions that help me realize what I don’t want in life.
It is a fairytale to believe I will ever be able to look back and say: “The past 5 years I exactly followed my ideal life path” (what is that even? We’ll all die anyway, does it even matter? Ok that gets too philosophical, I’ll get back on track).
Bring It Back To Chess
So what does that mean concretely if we talk about chess improvement?
If you want to improve your chess, you know you should:
- Do what matters
- Do it well
- Do it consistently
Instead, you might have been endlessly watching YouTube videos, playing Blitz Marathons, or just not spend nearly enough time on chess.
If that frustrates you, it is simply a lesson that improving your chess is really something you want in life right now.
You can take that lesson and get back on track.
Schedule your next week, or even just do one really good chess training session as soon as possible.
Start small, build it back up.
And most importantly: do it without guilt or shame that you “wasted” your last weeks or months.
If those feelings come up, you likely measure yourself against the ideal that you’ll train every single week exactly the amount you plan, with full focus and perfect execution.
That’s impossible. Nobody does that.
Keep improving,
GM Noël Studer
PS: This article was initially sent out to my Newsletter list. If you want to get chess improvement advice for free in your inbox, join 18,000+ chess improvers by signing up for Friday Grandmaster Insights here.
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