When chess improvers ask me for book recommendations, they expect a list of chess classics.
But here’s the truth: the books that shaped me most, both as a professional player and later as a coach, weren’t written about chess at all.
They were about mindset, focus, and how to live and learn better. Lessons I could then translate into my own improvement philosophy.
In this newsletter, I’ll share five books that have influenced my chess improvement philosophy more than any chess books.
1) Mindset by Carol Dweck
If there is one book that should be read by every struggling adult improver in chess, it should definitely be Mindset by Carol Dweck.
In my days as a professional chess player, I struggled with many things you might be familiar with:
- Self-worth issues, especially with the lack of results
- Overly short-term focus
- Fear of losing/making mistakes
These issues are what drove me to read a lot about mindset, and to work with a Sport Psychologist for 5+ years.
When I read Mindset, a few things clicked for me. It seemed like in one book, I had the full explanation of what I had worked on for so many years.
The core is this: many of us have what Dweck calls a fixed mindset. This mindset focuses more on immediate results and the abilities we have. Phrases such as:
- I’m just not smart enough.
- I suck at chess, which means I’m stupid.
- If I lose this game, I’ll quit.
- I have to wait until I start playing competitively. I’m not ready yet.
are indicative of this mindset. This mindset is the core reason for our frustration, anxiety, and emotional pain when trying to improve at chess (and anything else, to be honest).
The mindset Dweck recommends is a growth mindset. A mindset focusing on growth, learning, curiosity, and long-term improvements.
Phrases such as:
- When I lose, I learn.
- It was a very interesting game, I enjoyed it, even if I lost.
- Every game I play is an opportunity to grow.
are indicative of a growth mindset.
Even though reading and understanding it doesn’t mean that you automatically switch mindset and apply it (hint: knowing is NOT doing), if you struggle with the mindset part of chess, this book is an absolute must-read.
I’ve shared many of my personal struggles, or those from students, and will continue to do so in the future. For most of them, the basic understanding and research can be found in this book.
2) Chop Wood, Carry Water (by Joshua Medcalf)
This is a super short book with a few extremely valuable lessons.
- Focus on the basics
- Be in the moment
- How you do anything is how you do everything
- Stay consistent
John moves to Japan to be guided by Master “Akira-sensei” to achieve his dream of becoming a samurai warrior. He expects fancy training methods from day 1. Instead, he gets increasingly bored and irritated by the simplistic training of “Akira-sensei”.
Trying to find the shortcuts, he gets injured and prolongs his journey to Mastery.
The story is a great mirror for so many of us who want to forcefully find a way to avoid sticking to the basics and improve with fancy, quick hacks.
I aim to re-listen to the story ~1 a year, just as a reminder to myself. I’ll do that after finishing this article 🙂
3) Essentialism (by Greg McKeown)
The less but better philosophy has greatly resonated with me, especially since my Traumatic Brain Injury. When I was forced to get away with 2-3 focused hours a day, I absolutely had to figure out what was essential and what was not.
I read a couple of books on this way of living, of all of them, Essentialism stuck the most with me.
When we don’t take the time to consider what matters and what doesn’t, we fill our lives with things that might seem important, but aren’t really essential. Overwhelmed with all these tasks we feel we have to do, we don’t have space and time for the things that actually matter.
The way out is to get to the bottom of things and understand what really, truly matters. Then, we intentionally set aside time for those things first.
As Greg writes on his homepage:
Essentialism isn’t one more thing; it is a different way of doing everything. It is a discipline you apply constantly, effortlessly. Essentialism is a mindset; a way of life. It is an idea whose time has come. – Greg McKeown
Every year, this philosophy becomes more and more important.
We get flooded with information, and billions of dollars are spent on understanding how to hijack our attention and keep it for longer to make more money.
Books I also loved on this subject are:
Anything by or on Stoics is also a very interesting read. Their idea of “Focus on what you can control, forget about what you can’t” is very close to essentialism.
4) Deep Work (by Cal Newport)
Once you understand what truly matters, you need to do it properly to get any kind of results. Combining these two is the core idea of Cal Newport’s Deep Work.
In it, he argues that to make meaningful progress, we need to set aside undistracted work-time for difficult, important projects. This book inspired me to come up with what I call the Chess Zone. A place you create to have high-focus chess training and nothing else.
I have written training plans with clear time slots for chess before reading this book, but it reinforced the importance of that habit. It turns out the things that matter most are often not the easiest things.
So if we don’t plan them, we end up not doing them.
Cal is a great thinker I learn from often. I highly recommend two of his other books, Digital Minimalism and Slow Productivity, as well as his Podcast.
He really walks the walk, which is increasingly difficult in a distracted world (even if you know what you should do, it is really hard to do it!).
As a little side note, you might recognize where my three Do’s of chess improvement come from. In an oversimplified form, you can argue that those are directly inspired by:
- Do what matters (Essentialism)
- Do it well (Deep Work)
- Do it consistently (Chop wood, Carry water)
5) The Psychology Of Money by Morgan Housel
This might be a surprising pick. After all, what does money have to do with chess improvement? Well, as it turns out, quite a lot!
We humans love to think that we are rational beings who decide with pure logic. Turns out that’s BS (Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow is a fascinating read on this as well). Most of our decision-making is first and foremost influenced by emotions.
In Psychology of Money, Housel shares stories of financial decision-making that are based on emotions. And well, often those aren’t the best for us. To be able to improve on those decisions, we don’t need more knowledge.
“Just don’t panic when the market goes down, stay strong!”
Instead, we need to understand why we make those emotional decisions, and how we can prepare for those difficult moments beforehand.
His general financial advice is super simple. He could probably share it in a 2-page PDF. This book isn’t about the knowledge. It is about the skills you need to apply what you know to be true, but can quickly forget when shit hits the fan.
In chess, it is so easy to sit at home with an Engine on and see “the obvious move this player has to find”. But then, you sit at the board yourself, the clock is ticking, and you make some absurd-looking blunder.
Well, just knowing isn’t enough. You need the skills to execute under pressure.
It Is Not About the Knowledge
Even if you don’t read any of these amazing books (you definitely should!), I hope you’ll take away one key commonality:
Life and chess are difficult. It is not about the fancy knowledge, the sophisticated training, or the hidden investment methods. Often, we already know what we should do. What defines our progress is whether we can keep things simple and consistently do what matters.
Duh, This Is Obvious
Some people say this is obvious, nothing new. And to them I say: you’re absolutely right.
My aim is not to blow your mind with some revolutionary training method. In the 21st century, with access to the internet and AI, just transmitting knowledge isn’t the real value anymore. The Stoics already knew 2000 years ago:
“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…” – Epictetus
The true value is in helping you apply what matters:
- Doing what’s essential
- Doing it with focus
- Doing it consistently
That’s my mission with all my writing and courses: to translate the best lessons from inside and outside chess into a simple, actionable improvement system.
Because at the end of the day, the real difference in your chess isn’t how much you know, it’s how well you apply it, one game at a time.
Keep improving,
Noël
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 17,000+ chess improvers by signing up for Friday Grandmaster Insights here.
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