Constantly overlooking chess puzzle solutions, any tips?

Sort:
R0jym

Hello there, I seem to always have this problem where I often overlook simple solutions from chess puzzles when I calculate variations on the entire board (Yes I look for force moves, checks captures and threats) I often calculate so long that I forget to look for other things as well in the board, but knowing me I naturally don't do that because I will just think that It'll just make the entire process more complicated.

As an example, here is a puzzle from the book I own called "The Gambit Book of Instructive Chess Puzzles" at page 12, puzzle #17, it is white to play. (Most of the puzzles from the book has no said objectives like take material, checkmate, 4 moves to mate etc.)

ย 

In this position I kept calculating variations on how I should exploit black's defenses to promote my pawn or how I should get tempo so I could promote my other pawns from the a and b file without black's bishop and queen checkmating me, but dumb me the solution in this puzzle is just literally Rook to c1! I literally took 30 minutes to find the solution and I didn't even thought about it at all because my mind is more intrigued into a certain area of a board that has a lot of pieces and a lot of activity going on in that certain area of the board.

So I'm looking for ways or tips on how to overcome this problem I have because it seems to be getting annoying for awhile now, thanks for the help.