How an adult improver achieves a 2200 rating

As of the writing of this post, my rapid rating is 2204. I started my chess journey as an adult and I'm going to discuss my recommendations.

My biggest recommendation is that you play games with focus and intention. Afterwards you analyze the games. When it comes to adult improvers there are 2 large camps that many people fall into. They either don't play enough games, or they don't play their games seriously enough. For the latter, they might play while drunk, eating, texting, etc. For both camps the reason underlying their behavior is fear. Chess for better or worse has a reputation of intellectualism. Some people believe if they try as hard as they can and lose, it is a negative comment in regard to their intelligence. They feel stupid and that is a very unpleasant feeling for an adult. So, people often don't sincerely try, because if you don't try then you didn't truly fail. Your ego has an excuse in case you lose. In truth, chess doesn't reflect on your intelligence. It is a game. Being good at it doesn't mean you're smart. Being bad at it doesn't mean you're dumb. Chess is a game of pattern recognition, not intelligence. Play a lot and confront your mistakes. Avoid distractions while playing. When I play online, I play in complete silence and I'm not doing any other activity. I put 100% of my focus into the game I'm playing. 

In terms of specific recommendations, my suggestions are not radical. Do tactics (both attacking and defensive), review master level games, try to think prophylactically, be resourceful when in a losing position, and don't obsess over openings and endgames.

To expand on the final point. The separation of chess into 3 phases (opening, middlegame, and endgame) is arbitrary. It is all chess. If you just focus on playing good chess, you can play the opening and endgame fairly well even if you don't know theory. I would recommend learning the basic endgames, and some basic opening theory for the openings you play. However, don't go overboard. It can easily become a massive time sink for very little practical value. You can learn a lot about both things incidentally by just playing, analyzing, and going over master level games. I haven't formally studied openings or endgames in over a year. Even before that I only lightly glanced at them. That lack of dedicated study hasn't hurt me yet. 

I will write a follow-up post when I hit another rating milestone.