3 Tips To Unlocking Your Hidden Potential To Become A Better Chess Player

I like to credit the ideas of this post to the Huberman Lab Podcast with guest Adam Grant and Grant's latest book, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things. I would highly recommend listening and reading them for yourself if you are interested in the topic of general improvement. 

In this post, I would like to share three tips I've learned and tried to apply to maximise my potential in chess.

1. Challenging current biases 

This is one of my favourite losses. Before this game, I relied solely on opening principles and disliked learning many lines of opening theory. However, losing a game this quickly has motivated me to learn to take the opening phase more seriously. I can safely say that I haven't gotten into this much trouble this quickly in many of my games (at least until this piece is written).

Two things I've learned from this: 

1. If I didn't take this as a learning opportunity I would have stuck in my old ways. 
2. This loss made me realise that I was limiting my own progress in understanding chess. - If it happened here, I wonder what other biases I have but fail to recognise yet. 

2. Seeking discomfort 

Which area (apart from openings) do I struggle in my games?

Calculation. Whenever I get into a position where I have to calculate deeply to find the right move, I often falter. The position gets blurry before I can make a decision, and I rely on my intuition and understanding instead. So I worked on this by solving difficult exercises from Jacob Aagaard Grandmaster Preparation: Calculation.

The idea is that you want to actively seek out the area of your own game which you are awkward about. 

Here are a few practical ways I make seeking discomfort easier:

• Do the hard thing first - I usually do this first thing in the morning because I know that later in the day, the thought of doing the hard stuff will overwhelm me.
• Reward myself - I follow the "If I complete X, I get Y" framework. For example, if I complete one page of exercises, I get to play five rapid games. 
• Have someone to keep me accountable - This doesn't have to be a person who does chess. I used to make challenges in university where I told a friend if I didn't complete X, I had to buy them coffee.  

3. Validating progress when the results are against you

I can tell you that there were many times when I completed the exercises in Grandmaster Preparation, I felt like giving up. I got none of the answers right. I failed to see as many moves as the book answers suggest. I missed countless resources for both sides and the list goes on. 

Did I make the right choice to work on this book?

One day, I thought that my approach was too depressing and that something needed to change. So, I started to focus on my effort and progress instead. 

I write all my answers in a notebook. This makes it easy for me to look back and track my thought processes when completing the different exercises. To my surprise, I was making progress, just that I hadn't found the right solution.

For example, my ability to visualise the board without it getting blurry improved, my ability to look for tactical patterns improved, and I ask myself the right questions. 

Every small win counted until, eventually, I did get the answers right. 

Therefore, when facing disappointment, ask yourself:
"Did I make yourself better today?"