Stop Waiting for Perfect Focus (And Just Play)
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[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome back to Next Level Chess podcast. I'm grandmaster Noël Studer, your host, and my goal with this podcast, my work is to help you simplify your chess improvement, to put in the meaningful work and to see real improvements.

Today I wanna talk about something that I think I get misunderstood on, which is playing with focus that often for adult improvers turns into not playing enough or waiting for perfect focus and otherwise they are not playing. So let's talk about why I recommend playing with good focus, but how you can keep this actionable and not turn it into [00:01:00] an excuse to stop doing what matters most.

So playing with good focus is really key for your chess improvement. But often it pushes them into a dangerous trap when they hear it from me, which is perfectionism. Because when I talk about good focus, what students sometimes hear is like, if I'm not on a 10 out of 10 focus, I shouldn't play chess. And as a result, well with your life, with your work, with your family, with whatever other things you have going on, it gets harder and harder to actually play your games.

And that's not good because what was meant as something that helps you get more out of your games, we'll talk about that soon, turns into something that makes you not play anymore, which is horrible for your chess improvement. What I think leads to the misunderstanding is why I say you should play with good focus.

Because playing with good focus, main idea is not to get better [00:02:00] results. Obviously, it's nice to perform better, and especially when you play over the board, maybe you travel, you take time off work, invest money into hotel and everything. It feels stupid if you then don't focus properly and you just blunder your pieces and you think, "What am I doing?" Right?

But the main reason you should play with good focus is not the result. It is that playing is the best opportunity for you to learn and improve. Just forces you to put yourself under pressure, think hard, make tough decisions. And this way of training by playing will lead to mistakes that you can learn a lot from.

I had an article about this. Which mistakes do we want to avoid, and which mistakes do we learn a lot from? And when you don't focus properly, you probably hang pieces and you make so-called stupid mistakes that you don't learn anything from. Just like, oh, next time I should focus [00:03:00] better. That is a wasted learning opportunity. That is what I want you to avoid when you play games.

But the mistakes that come from putting yourself in a tough situation and then trying your best and making a mistake, that's exactly the mistake that we want to provoke by playing games. So this is a very, very important distinction.

You want to play with good focus because you want to allow yourself to make mistakes that you can learn from, and not just hang pieces. You don't really learn from that. And then tilt or whatever.

But here is what sometimes happens, right? I see this inside the Simplified Chess Improvement System community. That some people are saying, oh, well this week I didn't feel that well. So I didn't play, I changed playing for doing tactics or doing the last third, which is endgame/opening strategy.

And when I see that once it's like, okay, can happen. But when I see it happen over and over again with the same people, this is a [00:04:00] pattern and the pattern that will hurt your chess a lot.

Because this is just a easy excuse to not do the hard thing. And what is so difficult about this is that our brain will not tell us, ah, this is an excuse. Our brain wants to sell us the easier, the lazier, the funnier work in a way. The subconscious is at its best work and you really feel like, no, I couldn't play right now.

But what often happens is just like, yeah, your brain and body prefer a little bit easier training and maybe you also get anxious during games. And so you're saying, oh, no, let's not play these games, not put myself under too much pressure. Let's do something else.

And this is super important because as an adult with limited time, with family, hobbies, job... So many things, so many demands for your time, it's natural that you don't have the a plus focus that an athlete has at the Olympic Games every single week.

So when you have that high standard of like, I need to have the perfect [00:05:00] focus, otherwise I'm not playing, well, what happens is you stop playing.

And there are many bad things that are happening, but two main things. First of all, you even get more anxious. This is something I see with a lot of adult improvers. This is a vicious cycle. You're feeling uncomfortable playing because it puts you under pressure because you're scared of losing.

You're scared of making mistakes so you play less. Every time you play, it feels more strange and more important because you play that few games and so it just keeps going. At some point, you're not playing anymore, basically, and you can't bring yourself to click that button to play.

And the second thing is, you lose your competitive edge. Where, if you are playing over the board, for example, or you're playing an online league that has a specific time, you can't just change always your time. So when you have a specific time, you gotta sit down and play even with a b plus focus, even with a B minus focus, whatever your focus at this moment is. And I know that very, very well because I played professional chess with a traumatic brain injury.

So, with a [00:06:00] traumatic brain injury, you're not controlling when you feel good or when not. I just had to try to get the best, to well treat my body well so I can have higher chances for good focus. But also when I had not that good focus to find ways to still perform. And you only learn this if you're putting yourself in those situations more often.

So here is how I recommend that you use that play with good focus in your training.

So step number one is really planning your training ahead of time. That's the bread and butter. That's really the thing that I recommend. Anyone that wants serious improvement, you gotta plan your chess training. Once a week, you sit down and you write down the exact times that you're doing.

Which training? And you follow the one third rule, which means at least 33% of your total chess training time is spent playing and analyzing.

And once you look at your week and you [00:07:00] have all the training sessions, you just compare each and every slot, how likely it will be that you will have good focus. So let's say maybe you train a lot on the weekend and you say, oh, on the weekend I have much better focus than during the week.

So what are you trying to do from all the things that you're doing? You just prioritize the slots with the best focus for playing. So if you focus best on weekends, you play on weekends. But you're not trying to say, well, I need to have the perfect possible focus. I need to sit there like a monk, otherwise I'm not going to play chess. That's not going to work. So from your available times, you pick the ones that are best and put the playing and analyzing slot in those.

And then you fill up the second best focus slots would be for tactics, and the kind of easiest way of training is strategy, opening, endgames for the last third. You kind of have the quote unquote worst focus times for those. Obviously still helps if you have good focus then, but it's a little bit less important.

And then you [00:08:00] just don't change on short notice except for extreme circumstances. This is super, super important. So sometimes yes, you can adjust. You're sleeping horribly or you're sick, or you slept three hours and your brain just is absolutely not working well. Yeah, in extreme circumstances, maybe it's not the best to just go with the head through the wall and play.

So here is two questions that you can ask yourself, and if you answer both of them with yes, then you can change your training on short notice. So question number one is: Is it guaranteed that I can't learn anything from a game if I play right now? The goal with this being, I'm not saying, well, I don't, I have a little bit less high chance to win. We don't really care about that that much. The question is, will you make such stupid basic mistakes that you're not going to learn from them.

And the second question is: Is this exception a once in a month scenario? [00:09:00] Because if you fall back to this every week, then something is wrong. Just in the fundamentals.

If you can honestly answer yes to both, you postpone your playing session. But what you're doing right now is immediately look into the calendar. You want to keep up your one third rule. So you immediately look into your calendar. You're saying, okay, today I'm canceling, or tomorrow I'm canceling, whatever it is.

Which training session that is not playing and analyzing am I switching out for playing and analyzing? So let's say it's a Thursday, you have horrible focus. You're saying, okay, today I'm going to study strategy. Okay, 45 minutes, take it a little bit easier. I'll watch a video course. Fine. But when is the next time that you plan strategy?

Now you scratch this immediately and you are going to be playing then. So find the next best focus slot. Go for that. And if then again, you have the same problem, and again, you have the same problem, then you need to fix the real problem, which is you [00:10:00] really have a focus problem.

And a lot of people actually have a focus problem in today's world.

So then really figure out that issue. I've seen that, and these are the success stories that honestly make me most proud and just make my wor work most meaningful when students in the Simplified Chess Improvement System say, oh, I'm not sleeping well, and so how do I want to have improvements if I'm sleeping horribly? The thing I'm trying to put the most energy in is actually having a good sleep routine. So question is, are you consistently sleeping less than seven hours? If you are, if you're not getting your deep sleep, if you're not gaining your REM sleep, you gotta fix this. Are you training at the wrong time?

Maybe you're just always training after work, super exhausted. At 9:00 PM you try to squeeze in some playing. Well, it's very likely you're setting yourself up for failure already, because it's very likely that you won't feel a good focus after a long workday.

And then, another thing is, are you eating heavy, unhealthy meals? [00:11:00] Is your nutrition just not good? Is your brain not getting the right nutrients? So, well, focus is just very unlikely.

And this is really so important. I know this wasn't fully about a focus issue, but in this episode, if you realize, oh yeah, I have a focus issue. It's the most important thing for your chess, but probably one of the most important things for your life as well.

And for your chess, it might be the only thing that matters right now. Like somebody that is in a big sleep deficit. You don't need to train chess. Like for me, if I have two bad nights, I already feel a huge change in how well I'm thinking, how good I'm at writing, how good I'm at giving training.

It's just so important and some people have years and years of sleep deficits and you don't even fully realize how much more powerful your brain could be. So that is the most important thing right now for you. So pick up a book like, "Why We Sleep" from Matthew Walker. Start [00:12:00] working on your sleep.

Just try out things. There are many things. Try reading instead of scrolling before going to bed. Like, there are so many things, there are so many blog posts about it. So many ways to try to improve your sleep. Really put a good amount of effort and energy into this. And, if you don't have focus problems, just remember, always plan your training.

Don't change on short notice and only change if it's a once in a month kind of scenario and you really can't learn anything from the game. We don't worry about the result. We worry about if you played right now, can you learn something? If the answer is yes, go play that game. It's going to be fine.

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