While I have successfully resisted the urge to play blitz games, I have also allowed all my chess efforts to stop for the past 8 weeks. Too much travelling about, celebrations, seeing friends, family, studies, all of that left little time for chess.
This is a big hint towards the reason few people manage to become grandmasters as adults: it appears that it takes more than just discipline as you juggle all of your wants, needs and obligations. It may take superhuman discipline (after all I consider myself a pretty disciplined person!)
If you have many needs & obligations, little time is left for chess, and the little time left you may just spend playing rather than studying the subject!
If you have many wants, like me, juggling priorities may leave you achieving little in one of the fields you are really interested in. I want to travel more, I want to learn more languages, I want to learn psychology, I want to read more books, I want to learn chess, I want to keep friendships & family close, I want to rock & mountain climb, I want to snowboard more, oh, and I want to make money again! As a kid, you don't question all your wants and just go for one of them. As an adult, I seem to be wanting to perform the most complex balancing act to make sure I get ALL of them. Is this realistic? Only time will tell.
When you combine all of it, eventually one of these ends up taking a back seat. This last 8 weeks, that happened to my chess progress. Luckily, today I've resolved to get back to it. Today I'm warming up to get back into action, I've done some opening revision and I'm going to solve at least 20 tactics. The next few days I will follow the same routine until I feel I can unpause my Chess.com games and continue the full scale project. I am also going to pick My System back up as I left it about half way read. Hopefully, these steps will help me reach a next milestone in my chess progress.
This is a big hint towards the reason few people manage to become grandmasters as adults: it appears that it takes more than just discipline as you juggle all of your wants, needs and obligations. It may take superhuman discipline (after all I consider myself a pretty disciplined person!)
If you have many needs & obligations, little time is left for chess, and the little time left you may just spend playing rather than studying the subject!
If you have many wants, like me, juggling priorities may leave you achieving little in one of the fields you are really interested in. I want to travel more, I want to learn more languages, I want to learn psychology, I want to read more books, I want to learn chess, I want to keep friendships & family close, I want to rock & mountain climb, I want to snowboard more, oh, and I want to make money again! As a kid, you don't question all your wants and just go for one of them. As an adult, I seem to be wanting to perform the most complex balancing act to make sure I get ALL of them. Is this realistic? Only time will tell.
When you combine all of it, eventually one of these ends up taking a back seat. This last 8 weeks, that happened to my chess progress. Luckily, today I've resolved to get back to it. Today I'm warming up to get back into action, I've done some opening revision and I'm going to solve at least 20 tactics. The next few days I will follow the same routine until I feel I can unpause my Chess.com games and continue the full scale project. I am also going to pick My System back up as I left it about half way read. Hopefully, these steps will help me reach a next milestone in my chess progress.
