How Long Should We Focus on A Single Topic?

Besides doing 25 random tactics a day on chess.com as well as thematic ones and mate in 1-4 in books (I spend an hour a day on tactics), I want to improve my attack skills like attacking castled, un-castled, opposite castled, sacrifice.... My question is, should we focus on one specific situation daily or weekly, or even monthly. If we should have a daily schedule, then what is the most general plan for practice? Thanks so much.

This is a good book:
https://www.amazon.com/Mating-Castled-King-Danny-Gormally/dp/190798271X

Also this puzzle book has sections dedicated to sacrifices on f7, g7, h7 etc.
https://www.amazon.com/Chess-5334-Problems-Combinations-Games/dp/1579125549

A more advanced work is this classic
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Attack-Chess-Ladimir-Vukovic/dp/1857444000

And of course you can google search for great attacking games. Some people have made collections on chessgames.com

(I haven't looked at the games in the following link, but I pulled it up in 5 seconds with a google search just for an example)

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1000778

But I guess you're also asking, e.g., should I focus on attacking the uncastled king for a week, then on a castled king kingside for a day, then a queenside castle for a month or whatever.

The answer is it's up to you. Stick with something as long as you feel like you can still learn from it, and as long as it's still interesting. If it's too easy, or too advanced, or boring, then move on.

This can be used to skip a single puzzle, or a whole topic or book.

But anything that's confusing or frustrating, save. Even if you have to get out a pencil and paper and draw a little 8x8 board and draw all the pieces for the position. Save these things in a folder to revisit later. Pull them out every now and then to see if they make more sense to you.

Oh, by the way, if you're using windows an easy way to save something on your screen is pressing the "print screen" button.

It may be abbreviated, you know, like "prt sc" or something.

But then open windows paint program and paste (or press ctrl+v which is the hotkey for paste).

And an image of what was on your screen will appear in the paint program which you can crop and save as a picture.

This is, of course, a much easier way of saving a position you find interesting than drawing with pencil and paper

 Thanks buddy. I am asking more about studying plan. I am doing fine with basic tactics so I want to move on to something intermediate. However, attacking the king requires decoy, annihilation bla bla... So I don't know where to start, and how to practice right. I want to focus on things that benefit my level.

Think of it like you would working out.  

You dont work on just your legs.  

Depending on how much time per day you have to devote to study.  Divide up your study session into different parts:

30 minutes on tactics.

30 minutes reviewing a GM game.

15 minute break.

60 minutes doing analysis of one of your games.

Take a break.

30 minutes on openings.

30 minutes working on strategy.

All of this is obviously just a random idea.

Bacon gives good advice, as usual.

I like to break it up into study, playing, and drills.

So for example maybe I do tactics for an hour to warm up, then play for an hour, then study out of some book for an hour.

Or the 1 hour of drills might be reviewing my openings for 30 minutes, and 30 minutes of basic endgames.

Then every month I change books.

Just an example. I don't like to go from strategy, to endgames, to openings all in 1 day, but to each their own. There's no magic formula.

Ah! Thank you Bacon and Preggo. So basically, I would pick a tactical or strategical theme to work on each day. I first spend 30 min to go over the concepts and example, then another 30 min to go over master games that highlight the theme, then about 30 min for problem solving or drill (if available on chess.com). So, I guess would follow the study plan on chess.com?

Yeah, that sounds great. If you pull from multiple resources to try and learn about a topic (books and GM games for example).

Chess.com seems to have very good training material / study plans... chess.com didn't exist when I was learning chess, so I don't know from personal experience, but from what I've seen it seems great.

"Per year" instead of "per day" for this schedule if you have kids, and patience! Results will come sooner or later.

Just to give you an idea.  On chessable.com, i have been strudying this book:Improve Your Chess Tactics: 700 Practical Lessons & Exercises.

I have been studying the book for about a month, and am still on the first chapter on Deflection.  I want to make sure i completly understand each position in the chapter.

@IMBacon, 

I've been considering getting that book.  You've only done one chapter, but what is your impression so far?

Im not big on books as a study tool (I do lazy studying - online tacttics, chess mentor, etc.)  But so far im really enjoying the book.  Some of the reviews on chessable.com:

Martin Eden, SoloSchacchi: 
I challenge every body to show me that after careful study of this fantastic book he has not be come at least a Candidate Master. 

Daniel King, the Guardian: 
The last section is a giant examination of 356 positions where themes are mixed - so it's a truer test of your skill. Solutions are carefully explained and the layout is clean, generous and attractive. 

Max Euwe Centre, Amsterdam: 
After you have worked your way through this book and learned a lot, you will be a crack tactician. 

Alexander Nikitin, Garry Kasparov's coach: 
A great book!

I am a big fan of Daniel King, so if he likes it, i feel good about the book,

http://chessimprover.com/supercharge-your-training-with-solitaire-chess/

I would love to hear your opinions on this topic IMBacon. You, as a chess teacher/professor, know more about learning methods!

I am a big fan of solitaire chess.  Provided!  That the student using it has some post basic understanding of the game.  I would not recommend it for a beginner.  No amount of solitaire chess is going to be of benefit if the person knows how the pieces move and thats it, unless they use it as a basic reminder for opening principles.

My former coach IM Valeri Lilov (Tigerlilov) always had me take the losing side when using solitaire chess.  Why the difference? Who knows.

P.S.  Please dont use words like "professor" youre giving me wayyyy more credit than i deserve.  Reserve that word for someone that really knows what they are doing.

"... This book is the first volume in a series of manuals designed for players who are building the foundations of their chess knowledge. The reader will receive the necessary basic knowledge in six areas of the game - tactcs, positional play, strategy, the calculation of variations, the opening and the endgame. ... To make the book entertaining and varied, I have mixed up these different areas, ..." - GM Artur Yusupov

Good Chess Books for Beginners and Beyond...

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/good-chess-books-for-beginners-and-beyond

And how good is your tactic?

You did 8800 tactics and only 2200+ rating on tactics?

Do you think you should consider better method of studying in tactics? 

O.P , Do you would like to (a) improve chess by doing tactics or (b) do you enjoy playing tactics (puzzles)?

I will answer on first question. This is what I do in tactics in chess.

There are three steps in decision making of a move 

1. Whether there is tactics/no tactics( Time management/ where should I spend my time)

2. What is my candidate move( predictive move)

3. Need to recheck my candidate move is right  or wrong (tactics) 

Most tactics training will categorize drills like, decoy, discover check. In the real game , no one is going to hint you "hey there is decoy in 2 moves" .  So how can I know whether there is a tactics or not.

There will be shortcuts in memorized pictures in our brain that leads to that decision.

In this example, I will not consider tactics for checkmate with those pieces in mate in 2, cos my brain has shortcut that " I can block opponent king's one row escape when only my knight and bishops have different colors" . This is waste of time in calculating tactics.

But in this diagram , I will consider attempting checkmate opponent king with my rook cos, my knight and pawn have same color" 

There are also multiple patterns or shortcuts in my brain where there is a possiblilty of tactics or not.

For example, think about knight fork only when your knight and two opponents pieces are in same color.

Step 1. Those pattern recognitiions will tell you where there is likely tactics or not. If there is no tactics, dont waste time, improve your pieces to better location, files etc.. In fact if you have well placed pieces logically and positionally, you can prevent 90% of tactics. For example, in this position after. 1. e4 ..e5.2.Nf3..f6 .Black  misplaced weak move 2...... f6 , so there is 3. Nxe5 tactics possiblilty. If black play 2. Nc6 instead , no need to consider tactics.

Step 2. I think there is tactics, where should I hit. That need experiences, about weak pawns, hanging pieces , checkmates etc

Step 3. Did i check all lines.

In conclusion, better players dont waste time in doing unlikely tactics moves. Instead they spend time in step 1 by  putting pieces in well corordinated places. Step 2, They have better  accuracy in prediction of likely tactics, checkmate or promotion etc. Step 3. Tactical calculations according to your available time limit.

That is the reason, where amateur playing 2 hours /game cant win a GM playing 2 mins per game.