Studying GM Games

In art, sports, or music, it can help just to see what a professional performance looks like. It doesn't mean you understand it, you're just getting some general impressions. In chess one thing you might notice right away is they don't seem to capture as often. For example two opposing pawns attacking each other and both players ignore it for many moves.

Why do they do that? What if one of them had captured? Doesn't matter, don't try to figure it out. The point is if you'd never seen it, you might not even realize these sorts of ideas exist.

I wouldn't spend a lot of time. Maybe set a schedule like every time before you play you'll first look at a few games. 5 or 10 minutes per game, nothing intense. Games of early players like Morphy and Capablanca are good. Over time you'll pick up patterns and ideas... but if you worry about "why did they do that" or "what if they did something different" too much, then it can be frustrating and counter productive.

Thank you Chin for taking the time to teach me. 😌

It will be better if you started studying annotated master games.

I used to look at GM games and admire brilliant moves. Now I look at them just for general ideas about how to make threatening development moves, how and where to begin an attack, etc.

I think it's always worthwhile looking at them in that general way.

The games are not all played by GMs, but here are some instructive possibilities:
Simple Attacking Plans by Fred Wilson (2012)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708090402/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review874.pdf
https://www.newinchess.com/Shop/Images/Pdfs/7192.pdf
Logical Chess: Move by Move by Irving Chernev (1957)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708104437/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/logichess.pdf
The Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played by Irving Chernev (1965)
https://chessbookreviews.wordpress.com/tag/most-instructive-games-of-chess-ever-played/