I am an older player and this topic of visualization and its impact on accurate calculation (which in turn affects speed of calculation thereby causing time trouble) is a significant issue).
In particular I am thinking of the problem of "ghosting" where I retain the image of a piece or pawn on a square that is no longer there. Is that file, rank, or diagonal open or closed in this variation? Did I just lose a defender? Is my piece or my opponent's piece now pinned 4 ply deep into this line? Whoops, I didn't see my opponent's zwischenzug 6 plies back.
If there are ways to aid concentration and determination I would appreciate it.
I have huge problems in spatial orientation, I always had. A GPS is for me the best piece of technology produced by humankind. I have also enormous difficulty to make the pieces stay in the right places when calculating. This is really amazing. I know how to checkmate with Q + N (smothered mate) and will find the pattern very quick in my games, not because I can calculate this well, but because I worked hard to learn these patterns.
Usually I have to sweat a lot to see a very simple position in advance, "my N goes there, he goes with his K there, I push my pawn, he goes with his N there" and I don't no exactly where my N is in this calculation. I have to start the calculation again, and again I will have problem to see clearly the final position.
Do somebody else feel that his problems in visualisation is related to a lack of spatial orientation? Are these things perhaps connected? Of course I can imagine a lot of people with poor calculation skills but with an amazing orientation, perhaps because they do not invest enough time to improve the specific visualisation needed in chess. I am talking about people trying hard to improve visualisation but with the impression that they make little progress.