Start With Why

A familiar tale

We have reached the middle of January. You have had plenty of time to commit to bold resolutions in pursuit of fantastic goals. You began with enormous enthusiasm. Things were going smoothly. Then something happened. A minor setback, but you got back on the horse. Then something else happened....and it all began to unravel.

So here you are, your plan in tatters and all the old bad habits are back in all their glory. A sad (some might say tragic, others pathetic) state of affairs. But not a new one. I myself have spent the last decade since my return to chess as an adult cycling through this little comedy.

However, there is another way.

"Start With Why"

This was the title of an incredibly popular TED Talk (13 million views), delivered by Simon Sinek in 2009. He suggested that great leaders, innovators and corporations have a powerful "why" and this drives them to success where others fail.

His central premise is, what he calls in the talk, "The Golden Circle".

The problem that most people face is that they are very clear on what they want to do. They have some notion about how they might do it, but never really consider the key question, why?

It probably will come as no surprise that Sinek failed to consider how this might apply to our noble pursuit of chess improvement. However, apply it most certainly does.

In this post I will show you how answering the "Why?" question might just be the key to genuine sustained improvement.

Where we might be going wrong

As we approach 2026, many of us will set goals for the new year. These can range from the reasonable to the delusional. But what most of them have in common is that they involve an increase in rating. This is perfectly natural. We want to improve at chess and our rating is the clearest measure of this. But the pitfalls of focussing (obsessing?) on rating alone are well documented. Tilt, depression, even abandoning chess altogether. These are all side-effects of seeing one simple number as the be-all and end-all of our improvement journey.

A commonly proposed solution

I am obviously far from the first person to suggest that rating goals are potentially one step away from a fatal obsession. What many writers have suggested as a solution makes a lot of sense.

We should set process instead of outcome based goals. Rather than a dream number we set targets for things we are going to do. Learn a new opening, play one classical game each week, solve ten puzzles a day - things like that. 

The advantage of process goals are clear: they are within our control. Rating gains are subject to the vagaries of fortune, but process goals simply require us to show up and do the work. The consequences will be what they will be. This is the wisdom the stoics and has much to commend it. But.......

Well, the astute reader can probably see where this is going. Our improved rating is the "what" and our process goals are the "how". I believe that most chess players don't stop to consider the "why" at the heart of the improvement process.

I realise that this sort of introspection is not everyone's cup of tea, but if you have been trapped on the dreaded plateau, making improvements only to slide back to where you started, then perhaps it is time to try something new.

The need for a compelling "why"

It is not obvious why a simple boardgame can prove to be so addictive. But it is. The mechanisms behind this compulsion fall into three main categories: competetive rewards, the joys of self-improvement and the intrinsic beauty of chess.

Winning is Fun!

There is no denying this. Fun and potentially addictive.

Many people have written about the nuerological reasons behind this. It is a fascinating topic, but one for another day. I suspect that however vague (or even innacurate) your understanding of the dopamine cycle might be, you know that it is intimately intertwined with the addictiveness of games. Blitz could be viewed as a sophisticated slot machine. However, there is an important difference. 

Winning against a real person introduces a new psychological dimension. And winning at a game that is viewed in popular culture as a benchmark for intelligence adds another layer to the allure of chess. If I am being ruthlessly honest this is probably at the core of why I became so committed to chess as a kid. The downside is that this ego driven identity attachment to the outcome is fragile and, ultimately, doomed to failure. Eventually you will lose and get gobbled up by a bigger fish. At this point motivation wanes.

Learning is also fun

Simply put, there is a deep satisfaction in mastering a difficult task. This is the essence of intrinsic motivation. The added bonus is that there is no end to it. Stockfish might solve chess, but we most certainly won't. The mastery path will last a lifetime and is completly independent from the vagaries of competitive results. 

Beauty is inspiring

This examination of chess in terms of the struggle, winning and losing, overcoming resitance, overcoming yourself misses an important point. Chess is more than a game. There are moments when a move or a position transcends the the previously imagined boundaries and expectations. There are moments when chess becomes sublimely beautiful.

If that sounds a little pretentious, forgive me. What I am trying to say is that there are moments when your jaw drops and you feel something akin to magic.

This is why I fell in love with chess. At some point I came across moves, positions and games that blew my mind. They made me realise that this was a game worth playing. It is a feeling that will  last a lifetime.

The cynic will argue that most of us will never play true masterpieces or find eternal, flawless beauty in our games. This is resistance talking. A clever trick that aims to derail a noble quest. The truth is that there is beauty to be found at every level. From Scholar's Mate all the way up to Marshall's gold coin move. When the beauty at one level begins to lose it's lustre, this simply compells us to learn more and aim higher.

My "Why" in Practice

The first important point to make is that identifying a non-competitive why is incredibly liberating. If my core why is to encounter moments of abstract beauty through chess, then results and the like become far less relevent. They are simply measures of where I am on a journey, or how accurate an idea was. Beautiful moves that are easily refuted are not beautiful, but rather they are reckless or desparate. 

Understanding what sort of games you want to play is also an excellent way of deciding what you want to study. The straightforward question, "Will this support my quest to ´play (and experience) beautiful chess", is a precise way of deciding the merits of a course of study.

A practical idea

In Jespar Hall's wonderful book, "Chess for Budding Champions" (strongly recommended) he suggests keeping a notebook full of golden moments from your games. We do need to eliminate mistakes, learn theoretical endings, drill tactical and work on innumerable other facets of the game, but it is surely worth celebrating memorable moments with equal fervour?

Postscript: If you are still with me....

This post has been a long read (with few pictures and no chess moves), but I hope it has provided some food for thought. I would love to hear from you (the good, the bad and the ugly) and I will do my best to reply to any observations. Otherwise, good luck for your chess in 2026. I hope you manage to satisfy your why!