Thing is, I think that pretty much everybody knows what they OUGHT to do to improve, but it is not the same as what they WANT to do. I like playing fast time controls, like up to about half an hour each on a really patient day. Now, if I really, really want to improve I should do all the things I don't want to do.
- Quit blitz and play 90mins plus
- Learn the major endgames
- Train with middle-game puzzles every day
- Get a repertoire book and REALLY learn it, and go into the resulting endgames with a computer.
- Quit booze.
I am not saying that this would make me a GM, far from it. (what happened to that kid who was going to become a GM in a couple of years in his spare time?) But I would by this means almost certainly improve AT LEAST a couple of hundred elo.
I guess I should also point out that the chances of me doing this are the same as breaking both my legs and having to stay in bed for a year. :-)
My current situation enables me to study chess daily.(2-4 hours) maybe more.
So I take each example, copy it in chessbase, insert the alternative moves and then follow the game with the book. When I am asked to try to evaluate myself, I write down my impressions in chessbase and copy the file. For example, I started the first chapter of The amateurs mind and spent the week on it. Next week, I will do chapter two ect...And most of the time, I will have read the chapters while just sitting somewhere before using chessbase and sometimes otb.