In general you should be spending approximately 80% of your time practicing and 20% of your time studying.
Once you've practiced to the point that your skill plateaus, you should then study more often to improve your play through analysis of your own games/studying GM games/reading books/memorizing openings and endgames. This same formula works for pretty much anything you want to improve at, not just chess.
Thank you for your reply. Yes I know you are correct. I was just very curious what those percentage guidelines were and I just can't find them. I think at my level it is something like 50%/50% split between study and play but I was hoping something might know what I was referring to and can reference the post I previously saw on chess.com in a different forum
Just playing doesnt do that much im my opinion. Playing AND GOING OVER THE GAME AFTERWARDS WITH AN EQUAL OR PREFERABLY STRONGER PLAYER does a lot more, but its hard to do this outside of something like a chess club or a strong parent/friend/chess coach. If you cant go over games with someone live, posting games here is better then nothing.
Growing up pre-internet, my best friend and I did one chess club game at slow time controls during the week, and when it was convenient a tournament on the weekend. It wasnt a ton of games, but we got to go over them with stronger players afterwards, and that was enough to improve fast when combined with independent study. My friend is now ranked #60 in the US. Anyway, my point is that it doesnt take a ton of live games, if you squeeze everything you can out of them. Using the internet to get 5x more games then we did is unlikely to be as good if you dont have a way to really learn from them.
I remember seeing a while ago someone post the recommended percentage of time that should be devoted to playing chess versus studying it in order to improve depending on the rating of the individual. It was something to the effect that if you are rated over 2300 you should spend the majority of your time studying while if you are 1200 you should be spending the majority of your time playing. I have done a lot of internet and chess.com searches and simply cannot locate this percentage scheme. Does anyone happen to have the exact break down? I know it is individual dependent but I really would like to find these numbers again for whatever they are worth. Thank you!