Struggling a bit lately with chess.

I've just hit a really bad slump in my chess.  I know I can play better, but as soon as I touch the pieces blunders happen.  I guess my biggest problem is consistency, I will outplay my opponent for several moves, and then suddenly make a ridiculous move (only realized a half second after made).  Does anyone know of any good ways to break a slump?  Good practice other than tactics puzzles for reducing such errors?

I wonder a bit if I need to tone down the aggresiveness of my play, but I am at heart an attacking player, so I don't know if toning my game down would help any.  Any ideas or opinions?

When I just started playing I had that problem too (still do to some extent obviously).

It got much better when I started imposing questions on myself I had to answer each time I made a move. I don't mean when picking different candidate moves, just when verifying that you're not blundering.

Like what is his most likely moves and what do I want to move after each of those, how does this move improve my position, try to visualize what the next few moves might look like etc.

Simply forcing myself to answer this every time before I played a move significantly reduced the amount of brain dead blunders where you hang a piece or something like that.

It doesn't really work when playing blitz, but then again, I also really suck at blitz.

Thanks for the advice.  I generally do do so.  I guess when I start doing 3 or 4 move deep calculations, I forget to check for things I might have missed.  You bring up another point, maybe I've been doing too much blitz.  My rating right now doesn't show it, but I know I'm a much stronger player under long time frames.

Thanks for the advice chess_gg.  I wouldn't call myself new to chess.  But it has always been an on or off thing.  I'm reasonably booked, and usually have an attack planned out 4-5 moves before I do it.  I just have massive moments of chess blindness at random times.  It seems like I may have to suck it up and deaden my opening repertoire, particularly axeing the KID.  Looking back, my worst problems are stemming from difficulty handling d4 games as black.  Any ideas on reasonably dynamic systems against d4, I'd prefer not to play queen's gambit declined lines?  In defending e4 I play a sicilian najdorf system, if that helps imagine what I'm looking for.  I don't know much d4 theory, I play e4 exclusively as white.

I usually make a mistake when I've seen a few ply down and just play too fast, missing an opponents reply.

Something solid against d4 that always poses huge problems against me (I'm almost exclusively playing d4) is the Grundfeld (and if I didn't play it myself) I'm sure the Nimzo Indian or the Nimzo/Queens-Imdian hybrid would be a pain to deal with. Something rock solid and still dynamic is the Slav or Semi-Slav. Especially the lines where black sacrifices a piece for a few pawns, check out the game anand-aronian at tata-steel for the most amazing attack game in the Slav.

If you have chess boards on the side to follow the games, as I do, are you comfortable with all of them?  I make more blunders of the type you mention on certain boards. For example, my two worst blunders were made on a miniature board of about 10x10cm.  I just didn't see well when I decided my move.  I also tend to make more blunders on the computer screen than when I work off a good chess board on the side.

play it slow, beat your opponent not the clock. Also you could use a real chess board not a computer screen

Thanks everyone for the advice.  I've turned my problem around a little bit. The problem turned out to be a matter of rushing things.  I'm training myself to look deeper and spend more time looking.  I often see several ply down, but neglect one or two lines.  Other than that, I've found I need to stop getting so engrossed in my plans that I leave a piece hanging.  So thanks for the advice and consider the problem mostly resolved.