Don’t Practice Before Bed

Doing the chess lessons during the day is impossible because I have too many obligations to school.There were several days that I missed my daily 10 lessons because I didn’t sit for practice until late at night when I was ready to sleep. This happened because I put them off in favor of other things, both important and unimportant. But the hard truth is that the 10 lessons usually only take me from 20-30 minutes. I got a wonderful idea from Daily Rituals to get my important work done first thing in the morning. So I started doing the lessons before breakfast in the morning and that eliminated the problem of waiting until late to do them and inevitably saying, “I’m too tired, I will just do this tomorrow.”

On a side-note, studying after taking some green tea is quite effective, not only for increased focus but also for the memory-enhancing amino-acids within the tea itself.

A Little Bit Every Day Keeps the Ball Rolling

It is surprising how effective a component consistency is in a practice regiment. Even a mere 30 minutes of practice a day in a week can result in more output than 4 hours of practice crammed in one day a week.

Those days where I practiced consecutively were the most effective and efficient sessions of the entire week. Concepts came to my recollection quick and their application was painless. On the days following skipped practice days, extra time was required to review the concept and then apply it. So instead of 3 steps, learn, recollect and apply, a fourth step was added, relearn, learn, recollect and apply. That is inefficient practice.

My mood was better on the days of consecutive practice. I looked forward to practice and wanted to keep going after completion. But on the days that I skipped practice, the following day my attitude towards the lessons was lethargic, especially since I knew that I needed to make up for the lessons I missed the previous day.

Going into a practice session with a bad attitude will lead to ineffective practice. That is why it is important to stay consistent so every single practice session can be of a high quality. Otherwise it is wasted time and energy. Not to mention that the mind becomes more susceptible to burnout from too much fatigue as an act of rebellion. Think of it as fatigue tolerance. Someone who runs every day is less likely to vomit after a mile run compared to someone who runs a mile once a year.

Which leads to my next point…

Energy is finite

The effectiveness of a practice session diminishes over time. After an hour to an hour and a half is when the effectiveness of practice drops off like a cliff dive. When that point arrives, it’s important to stop or bad habits may be created.

Practice should only be performed when energy and focus levels are high because improvement comes only when maximum effort is given. This is because boundaries are only broken when performance is at its best. High performance cannot occur when fatigued. Fatigue brings lethargy and other impeding persuaders, like doubt and fear, to convince the mind to give it and the body the break it needs to recover.

To keep energy and focus high, it’s necessary to work in short sprints rather than in a marathon. Often times tennis players zone out in between points to give their mind a break. This zoning out is also effective for chess or any other cognitive activity. Constantly scanning the board is tiresome, especially if habits are not in place to make this scanning more efficient.

Attitude fuels focus and energy. As a stated earlier, going into practice with a lethargic mindset results in ineffective practice.

A proper warm up puts the mind and attitude in the right place. It creates a fruitful environment for practice. Many times I am tempted to just jump into the lessons without warming up, but I know by skipping the warm up, the effectiveness of my practice decreases.

Reviewing concepts in a chess book and working simple puzzles that are at your current skill level or a bit below is a great way to warm up. The concepts are fresh on your mind so you know what to look for, and dominating the puzzles builds much needed confidence and cultivates a great attitude for effective practice.

New Concepts and Old Concepts are not Created Equal

Forming new habits requires more mental and physical energy than maintaining old habits. Thought and pattern recognition are nothing but habits. Once a concept like tactics is learnt and becomes a habit, second nature, it requires little time and energy for maintenance.

It is important to maintain these habits though, because if neglected, they will leave and time and energy must be spent to relearn them, which is inefficient. This is tackled by implementing a review day twice a week that is dedicated to practicing applying learnt concepts.

Conclusion

My biggest obstacle for this past week was not in realizing everything stated above, but making habits out of them. Preparation is great in cultivating new good habits. But even preparation is a habit I am working on instilling.

I feel at least a third of my practice sessions this past week were ineffective because of poor preparation; not knowing what time I was practicing, not warming up and cultivating a proper attitude, and not staying consistent.

Practicing the same time every day is a useful tool for tackling all of the above problems. By knowing when and where I will practice I can do my preparation and go into practice without any guesswork.