Episode 60 - The Best Books for Chess Improvement (That Aren’t About Chess)
===

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome back to Next Level Chess podcast. I'm your host, Grandmaster Noël Studer. And today's episode I'm super excited about because of two main reasons. One, the reception of the newsletter audience that has read the article that I'm going to read out in this podcast right now has been extremely positive.

So many people said it could have been the best newsletter they ever rad, and some of the books that I shared were touching them and they bought them immediately. So this is super cool. And the second thing is just me writing about these books that I'll share in this podcast episode helped me revisit them and I've already learned a lot or readjusted a lot of things thanks to it. So without further ado, let's get into it.

So when Chess improvers ask me about book recommendations, they often expect a big list of chess books. But [00:01:00] here's the truth. The books that shaped me the most, both as a professional player and later as a coach, weren't written about chess at all. They were about mindset, focus and how to live and learn better.

These lessons, I could then translate into my own chess improvement philosophy. And in this podcast I want to share the top five books that have influenced my chess improvement philosophy the most.

Book number one is Mindset by Carol Dweck, and I'm not exaggerating here. If there is one book that, especially an adult chess improver should read, it should definitely be Mindset by Carol Dweck, it's super important and it helps you get into what she calls a growth mindset from most likely what you're having right now is a [00:02:00] fixed mindset.

So in my professional days, I struggled a lot with these things and I worked with a sports psychologist for five plus years. I read a lot of books. And then after having finished my career, I read this book Mindset and it felt like, well, this is the one book that actually explained what I worked on for so long.

Now, it doesn't mean that if you read that book immediately, boom, you resolved all your problems. But it's good to understand the foundations of these psychological problems. What problems am I talking about? Self-worth issues? Especially when results are lacking. I had an overly short-term focus. I often felt the fear of losing or making mistakes.

Oh no, I shouldn't lose this game. What if I lose this game? I feel like an idiot, and so on. So this book really helps. And the core of the suffering that many of us have is in what Carol Dweck calls a [00:03:00] fixed mindset. This mindset focuses more on immediate results and the abilities we have right now and less on the growth.

That's why she caused the better mindset, the growth mindset. So if phrases such as, I'm just not smart enough, I suck at chess, which means I'm stupid. If I lose this game, I'll quit. I have to wait until I start playing competitively. I am not ready yet. If those phrases ring a bell in your mind, then you probably suffer from some part of a fixed mindset as well, and it's really the core reason for most of our frustration, anxiety, and emotional pain when it's about chess improvement.

But probably if you have that, you will realize that improving in other areas will also create the same kind of frustration and then anxiety and so on. Just might just be the activity where it comes out the most because it's such a difficult [00:04:00] thing to improve at.

And probably in other domains you might be already very good, so you feel it less, but it will be there nevertheless. And the mindset that Dweck recommends in this book is a growth mindset. It's a mindset focusing more on growth, learning, curiosity, and long-term improvement. So it's not the next game, but it's what I can learn from the next game.

So then we will have phrases more like, even when I lose, I learn. It was a very interesting game. I enjoyed it. Even if I lost, or every game I play is an opportunity to grow. If you not only know these phrases, but you really live these phrases, you are probably having a growth mindset. And for me, this is really a key distinction.

For a long time I knew what I should think or feel. But I didn't fully feel it, and I'm not [00:05:00] completely over it yet, but it's just very good to get repeatedly the exposure to what the growth mindset is because it's not only going to make you improve more in the long term, but actually probably also make you feel better in the journey.

So it kind of has everything that you want. It's just not as easy to implement.

Even though reading and understanding this doesn't mean that you automatically switch mindset and applying it, hint: knowing is not doing. If you struggle with the mindset part of chess, this book is an absolute must read. I've shared many of my personal struggles or those from students and will continue to do so in the future.

For most of them, the basic understanding and research can be found in this book. So again, I can't recommend this book highly enough. Go get it, read it, and then try applying it. And what's so good about the book is it's not only [00:06:00] theory, but it's also how to apply it in your own life.

Book number two, that has helped me a lot. And this is a super short read and in the newsletter I shared last Friday, I said that I will then reread this book when I finish writing. And I already did listen or read to the book again, like three fourth through. And yes, I learned again something and I got back again into more of the process mindset.

So it's interesting that this book, Chop Wood Carry Water by Joshua Medcalf, is a short inspiring story that I would say leans on the growth mindset lot. So it's really a super short book. It's like, I think the audio version is two and a half hours or something like that, so it could be also a longer article nearly, and it has a few extremely valuable lessons and I will share some, but these are not all of them.

So, how to focus on the basics, how to be [00:07:00] in the moment, how you do anything, is how you do everything. That one, for me is super important and how to stay consistent. And so what is this book? In this book, John moves to Japan to be guided by a master teacher that is called Akira Sensei to achieve his dream of becoming a samurai warrior. He has thought about this for a long time. He expects fancy training methods from day one. I can relate to that because a lot of my students have the same.

Instead, he gets increasingly bored and irritated. By the simplistic training of Akira Sensei. Again, I can relate to that because some of my students are saying, oh, let's do something more interesting. Why always these basics. So trying to find the shortcuts, he gets injured. I can also relate to that because when training for a half marathon, I messed up my training, I train too much, and I had an injury, and this prolongs his journey to mastery.

The story is really a great mirror for so many of us who [00:08:00] want to force improvement, and by doing that, trying to do fancy methods instead of sticking to the basics. And as mentioned already, I aim to re-listen or reread this story roughly once a year, and it's always a good reminder. And every single time I can tell you guys, yes, I've read it already a few times.

Every single time I can take away something or I just realize, oh yeah, I've gotten a bit off the path and I've focused on results too much, or whatever it could be. So I highly recommend that as well.

Let's get to the third book, which is Essentialism by Greg McKeown, and I've gotten into a rabbit hole of this less but better philosophy, and it resonates greatly with me, especially since I was basically forced into it with my traumatic brain injury.

So when I was forced to get away with two to three hours of focus every day. Basically had [00:09:00] to understand what is really the absolute key essence now in chess training, but also in other things in life. And what can I leave out. If other people are using eight hours a day, then how can I get similar amounts done, or actually even more with two to three hours?

And I read a couple of books on this way of living and Essentialism by Greg McKeown has stuck the most with me.

The key point is that we have so many things in our lives that if we don't take care and we plan and we are very scrupulous with our time and what actually fills our day, then we will realize that all days are filled with the not so important things, and we don't have space and time and the energy anymore for the things that actually matters.

And it's really important to understand what truly matters and then to intentionally set aside [00:10:00] time for those things. Kinda start with them usually in the morning and really focus on doing those and then say, okay, there could be some extras, but I only get to them when I did what matters most. And Greg writes on his homepage.

That's a quote. Essentialism isn't one more thing. It is a different way of doing everything. It is a discipline you apply constantly, effortlessly. Essentialism is a mindset, a way of life. It is an idea whose time has come. End of quote. And I truly agree because every single year that we get more AI, more technology, more YouTube videos, more articles, more, more, more of everything, this becomes more important.

We get flooded with information and I think what some people are not fully realizing, billions of dollars. Yes. Billion, not million. [00:11:00] Billions of dollars are spent on understanding how to hijack our attention and keep it for longer to make more money. So the only way out is not trying to, well, I'm smarter than the billions of dollars that have been spent on understanding or psychology, but I need to take care of my own life.

I need to take charge of my own life. Need to understand what really matters. Then finding strategies to actually get these things done because if you leave it up to the algorithm or whatever, you won't succeed.

So a few books that I also loved on this subject ar The One Thing by Gary Keller. Really like this one. The Power of Less by Leo Babauta. That was, I think the first time I got in contact with this less, but better philosophy. It was like back in 2016 maybe. And then Hell Yeah or No by Derek Silvers. And the one thing that I actually missed in my article on this is the Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris.

It's actually the [00:12:00] book that started my journey as a chess coach. Because when reading this, I understood I wanted to... one of the most important but hard things that I wanted to do is to give my way, my knowledge about chess improvement. And that's what made me start my blog. And from then on I started creating this coaching business and so on and so forth.

So that's certainly a book as well. And then anything by stoics is very interesting in my opinion, because they have this kind of key idea of focus on what you can control, forget about what you can't, and that is at least a part of essentialism, or it gets close to essentialism. Book number four is Deep Work by Call Newport.

So once you understand what truly matters, you need to do it properly to get any kind of results. You understand in chess improvement, you want to do, let's say tactics. You wanna analyze your games, play, and then you need to do it [00:13:00] properly. If you just play without any focus at all, probably not helping.

So, Deep Work helps you understand how to do things well. In the book, Cal argues that to make meaningful progress, we need to set aside undistracted work time. This is more about work, but it really works perfectly for chess improvement as well. We need to set aside this time for difficult, important projects, and this book inspired me to come up with what I call the chess zone.

I believe there should be a podcast episode on it. If not, there is definitely a article on it. You can find it on my blog by searching chess zone. This is a place you create to have high focus chess training and nothing else. And spoiler alert, doesn't have to be a room. It can really just be a area that you can create or you put your chair differently. It's all explained in the [00:14:00] article.

I did write training plans with clear time slots for chess before reading this book, but this really reinforced the importance of that habit. And it turns out that the things that matter most are the things that are hardest, and that means if you leave it up to chance again, you probably end up not doing these things.

If you don't plan them, you don't do them.

Cal is a great thinker I learn from often and I highly recommend two of his other books. He has more, but those two are with Deep Work, my favorites. So, Digital Minimalism and Slow Productivity. And I also recommend his podcast, which is also in a monologue type form. Very often he does have his producer with him and sometimes only occasionally he has guests.

But I really enjoy learning from him this way. And what I find very impressive with Cal is that he really walks the talk. And it's super difficult to do that [00:15:00] in our distracted world. He kind of stays away from social media. He really sets aside his focus time. He is very intentional about his life.

It's not only what he teaches, but he actually does it. As a little side note you might recognize that the three do's of my chess improvement system are closely linked to the books that I have shared right now. You can say, do what matters is Essentialism. Do it well, is Deep Work and do it consistently is the book Chop Wood, Carry Water. And the first book I shared, Mindset, is the core mindset you need to actually make it work. If you don't have the proper growth mindset, you probably get distracted by results. You get frustrated too quickly and you can't do any of, do what matters, do it well, do it consistently.

And let's go to book number five. That might be a surprising pick. It's called The Psychology of Money by Morgan Hauser. Because you might say, well, what does [00:16:00] psychology of money or money in general have to do with chess? Turns out quite a lot because there is this key misunderstanding from us humans, I believe. We love to think that we are rational beings and we decide with pure logic. Turns out that's not the truth. By the way, Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow is also a great read on this if you're interested in more of that. So most of our decision making is first and foremost, influenced by emotions.

So Psychology of Money is about the emotional way of deciding about our finances and how that can turn out pretty badly for most of us. So to be able to improve on those decisions, we don't need more knowledge. People can scream, just don't panic when the market goes down. Stay strong.

As long as they want. But if someone gets so much fear in a day and just quickly in five seconds, [00:17:00] decides to sell all of their things because just see the graph going down, that's not a knowledge problem. That's an emotional problem. And so I really love this book, trying to talk about all the ways we decide emotionally and then how we can prepare for those difficult moments beforehand.

So his general financial advice is super simple. Well, I hope my chess advice is also super simple. So you can see the similarities there. And probably he could share it like in a two page PDF. So if you just want the super sophisticated financial insights, that's not your book. He's not trying to come up with a absurdly difficult way of handling your finances.

So the book is not about knowledge. It's about the skills you need to apply what you know to be true, but you can quickly forget when shit hits the fan.

I would say the analogy for chess is you can sit at home with the engine and everything seems super obvious. Even when very [00:18:00] strong players play, you can see with the engine, that's bad. That's good. Oh yeah. That's so obvious because once you see the suggestion, it's hard to understand how difficult it is without seeing it. But then you sit at the board yourself, the clock is ticking. And you make absurd looking blunder over and over and over again. So again, this is not like, oh yeah, just don't blunder, or yeah, don't put a piece where it's not supported or whatever the super easy takeaway might be, it's like, how do you understand what happens emotionally in these moments and what are the skills that you need to execute under pressure?

So that's Psychology of Money.

And before you hopefully get these books and start reading them, I just want to give you a small conclusion here as well, which is it's not about the knowledge. So even if you don't read any of these books, I really think you should even probably put away some of the chess books that you're reading right now, [00:19:00] and especially prioritize those books, especially Mindset.

Definitely get Mindset. I hope you'll still take away one key commonality from these books. And that is life and chess are difficult. It's not about fancy knowledge. It's not about sophisticated training. It's not about a hidden investment method. Often, we already know what we should do. What defines our progress is whether we can keep things simple and consistently do what matters.

And this brings me to a criticism I sometimes get for my work or when I actually look to some of the reviews for the books that I shared. If they are negative, they will most likely be in this direction because some people say, well, this is so obvious. This is nothing new. Why should one write a book about it or make a podcast episode about it, or create a system, a chess improvement system about that.

And if you're saying that these things are [00:20:00] obvious, I actually agree with you because my aim is not to blow your mind with some training ideas that you would never have crossed anybody else's mind. I believe in the 21st century with access to the internet and AI coming up, just transmitting knowledge or coming up with whatever, the super cool thing isn't the real value anymore because if you, thinking back to 2000 years ago, the Stoics already knew that it's about focusing on what you can control and stop thinking about what you can't. But that doesn't mean that we humans are able to just listen to that and say, oh yeah, I can apply that now in my everyday life.

So the true value I believe my coaching has is helping you apply what matters, doing what's essential, doing it with focus and doing it consistently. That's [00:21:00] my mission with my writing, my courses, my podcast, it's to learn lessons from mostly outside chess and bring them into a simple and actionable improvement system.

The whole point is not that you're blown your mind when you hear some of my improvement advice, but it actually, my advice or my clear takeaways are helping you put into action what you probably already know you should do. Because at the end of the day, the real difference to your chess improvement is not how much you know about chess improvement.

Hint: don't listen to 5,000 podcast episodes and YouTube videos and read all the articles you can find, but it's actually about applying things that are pretty simple. One game at a time. That's it from this one. See ya next time.

Hey guys, just two quick things before you take off. If you enjoyed this episode and want [00:22:00] more structured chess improvement tips from myself, check out my newsletter at nextlevelchess.com/newsletter. It's totally free. It'll always remain free, and it goes out every single Friday with the best latest chess improvement tips that I have, most of the podcast episodes that I record are based on a previous newsletter.

So getting the newsletter, you'll get the advice earlier and you'll get it directly into your inbox every single Friday. It's totally free, as I mentioned, and you can unsubscribe any time. So go to nextlevelchess.com/newsletter to sign up.

And one last thing. If you enjoyed this episode and if it helped you. Then please take a few seconds and review this podcast. This helps a ton. It helps other people see, oh yeah, many, many people profit from [00:23:00] the advice given in this podcast. Let's give this podcast a try, and if you can, if you know anyone in the chess world that would profit from this episode or any other episode.

Make sure to share it with your friends, with your people online. That's super helpful. Podcast growth is really just working through mouth by mouth recommendations, so thank you. Thank you so much for listening, and thank you for spreading the word about the Next Level Chess podcast. Now, that's all from me.

Thank you for listening and see you next time.