Chess Improvement Equation Part 3 - How To Study With Better Focus And Study Techniques
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[00:00:00] Hey and welcome back. I'm Grandmaster Noël Studer and you are listening to Next Level Chess Podcast. In today's podcast episode, I want to continue talking about the chess improvement equation. And two weeks ago, I introduced the whole equation as a reminder. "What" times "how" times the amount of time you spend every week equals your chess improvement score.

The higher your score, the more you will improve over time. So, last week we've then gone into depth on the "what", the first part of the chess equation, and today we want to go deeper into the "how". And I want to talk about why your "how" is your weakest [00:01:00] link and how you can improve it. How you can improve the "how". That's so weird, but yeah, that's what I meant to say. So, let's get into it and I hope you enjoy this podcast episode. 

Here's the truth. Most players don't know how to train. You've probably heard "work hard" your whole life, but no one taught you how to work smart. That's why so many players grind for hours without results.

If you're not seeing progress despite all the effort, it's not because you're not working hard enough. It's because you're not working the right way. And this goes for chess, but anything you do in life. It really has become a superpower to work smart and I want to help you get there. 

Let's talk a moment about why your brain is struggling to focus.

Our modern world is working against your chess [00:02:00] improvement. Here are three stats I found which, honestly, are just absolutely crazy. So one out of three adults sleep less than seven hours per night. This reduces cognitive performance drastically. And I noticed for myself: if I have a night where I sleep less than seven hours, honestly, I cannot record this podcast. I cannot write anything that makes sense. And I cannot give good chess lessons. My brain just doesn't work the same way. 

Second stat is: globally, 31% of adults do not meet the recommended levels of physical activity. And I have to tell you, it's not such an insane recommended level. This is really basic physical activity. Also, this lowers brain function. And if you miss that level, you even risk chronic [00:03:00] diseases, like heart problems, overweight, anything you can imagine is just very bad. 

And then the third one I found, which is maybe the spookiest of all, I don't know, is the average person, and that has been a study in Germany, spends over seven hours per day on digital media. That's, like, TV, phone, podcast, audible, like all of these things together, but seven hours. It's insane. So, we constantly train our brains to get distracted. And then, when we sit down at the chess board, we suddenly realize, "Hey, why can my brain not think straight for 15 minutes? Why is it chomping around? And why do I feel like I need 17 tabs open just not to get bored?". Well, it's because we train our brains to get distracted all the time. So, poor sleep, lack of movement, and constant distractions mean your brain runs at half power [00:04:00] at the most, honestly. And that's why your training feels harder than it should. And your chess results don't match your effort. 

Even worse, and this is for the people thinking, "Oh well, but my focus is great!" If you remain at this 50% brain power for a long enough time, you might not realize anymore how much better your brain could focus. And I see this with a lot of people around me. I have loved ones that obviously have a very hard time focusing, they have a very hard time listening during conversation, they have a very hard time, really just doing one thing at a time. But I've been there for so long that they don't realize this anymore. They think this is just normal and maximum brain power.

It is not. Once you accept this lacking focus as your new inevitable reality, you leave so much potential on the table and you can't change. [00:05:00] In order to change, you need to be aware that you could have a better ... focus. So, that's step number one. If I can do anything today with this podcast episode, it's to help you understand that your focus could be so much better if you had the right habits, if you trained your brain the right way. 

To do that, I want to talk shortly about what good focus really looks and feels like. When you're fully focused, it feels like magic. You get into a flow state and everything clicks. That's why I put so much time and energy into figuring out my ideal sleep routine, nutrition plan, and focus exercises as a professional player.

And this was partly also due to my traumatic brain injury, which had a big toll on my focus. So I felt even more the need to train my brain as good as possible [00:06:00] so that I can regain my focus power. And I just felt a huge difference. So, through this training and my traumatic brain injury, I felt the insane difference between a well-trained, focused brain, and a brain that is not trained and maybe even suffers from something like traumatic brain injury.

So, I've been at both ends. I have been at super low focus, five minutes phone call, and I couldn't, I just had so much headaches and so on. I had to just tell my friend, "Hey, I can't talk anymore." 

And then to getting into that flow state and just everything feels easy and is flowing. Ideal focus that you want to achieve as often as possible, it's not always going to happen, but the more, the better. For a training or playing session, you should feel the following way: you forget time and enter a flow state. Your mind needs no reminder to [00:07:00] focus on the next move. It just does it automatically. Thoughts of groceries, to-do lists and appointments don't even pop up. You don't have to tell yourself a hundred times, "No, don't think about that. Focus on chess." It's just automatically doing it. And even the hardest positions in the moment don't feel like a hard task because your mind is operating automatically and your brain is just doing its best to find a good move.

That's all it does. There is no space even to think, "Oh, this sucks. This is so hard. Why am I doing this?" There is no such thing in your .... head. Imagine training and playing with that level of focus consistently. It will be insane, the difference that you can see in your training, in how you feel about your chess and in your results as well.

And that's where I want to help you go, because I've seen the changes for myself. I've seen it with students, with core students. I really want to help as many people as [00:08:00] possible get to a good focus, so they will tell me, "Oh my God, I really couldn't imagine anymore that I could focus this well." Now that you know what a amazing focus looks like let's rate your focus. And having a low focus score right now isn't something to be ashamed of.

Actually, you are in good company. I would say most of the people right now have a rather low focus score. It's just because as we mentioned before, the world is not made for us to focus very well on one thing at a time, like a chess game. So, just try to assess this as honestly as possible. And if you assess your focus as perfect, right?

Again, in the "how", we have the focus, which makes up 0.5, so half of your points. And then we have the how you do things in a chess -specific way [00:09:00] that makes up half of your points. So, the focus score 0.5 would be perfect. And that would mean that there is nothing I could ever do to have a better focus score during chess training.

So, if you rate your focus at the highest point possible, 0.5, you are telling yourself and others that there is nothing you could ever do to have a better focus during chess training. That would be a very extreme statement. What we're doing now is, we're starting from the optimal 0.5 and then we detract points with a few questions.

Questions number one, which will focus on your healthy mind. Do you sleep seven hours daily or more, exercise daily, and eat a balanced diet? If you get all of them correct, you don't have to detract anything. If you [00:10:00] fail all of them, you subtract 0.2. And if you fail one of them, you subtract 0.1. Okay, area number two.

Do you manage to do one thing at a time? Question. When you study chess, do you fully commit? Do you only have one tab open, fully focused on chess, and your mind never drifts? If you never find your mind wandering, your mind is only locked in on chess, you keep your score. If your mind wanders, subtract 0.1.

Area number three. Eliminating distractions. Question. Do you avoid all interruptions? No notifications, no phone, no emails. Just when you study chess, only chess, nobody talks to you, you're in your bubble, you can enter flow, you will never be disrupted. [00:11:00] If that's the case, great, you keep your score. If not, subtract another 0.1 or 0.2 point from your score. And those were only the key questions. I could ask you more questions and make you subtract even more points. But, most of us already scored low here after these three questions if we answer these questions honestly. And again, that's actually a huge opportunity. The lower your score, the more room you have to grow and the bigger the payoff when you fix it.

Thanks to the right study habits and a decent sleep, exercise and nutrition routine, you can increase your focus exponentially. And this will not only help your chess, it will enhance any activity you pursue. And as a side note, that's also the reason why I start at the moment my [00:12:00] Next Level Training course with a section on how to study anything.

So, I first make sure that you know how to get the best focus and how to have good study habits before I go into chess technicalities. 

So now we had half part of the "how". We had the focus, and now I want to talk about training chess the right way. Most of this Next Level Training course, which I have worked on a lot and helped a lot of students with, is focusing on the second part.

So, how do you train chess actually? And most of my writing, most of my podcast, a lot is really focusing on this "how", because it is neglected. Most people just tell you, "Hey, study openings, do this, do that." So what you should do, nobody tells you, including in school, nobody tells you, "Hey, these, this language, how should you study it smartly?"

No, it's just "Study these words, learn this, memorize that." [00:13:00] How do I memorize? How do I learn? How do I remember something after two months after studying, nobody teaches you. That's why I want to talk about how to study chess the right way. Again, we will go from a perfect score and then I will just ask you a few questions and you will again subtract from this perfect score.

So you get your own score. Again, a perfect score would be a 0.5 score because added with the perfect focus score that would then give 1.0 score, the maximum you could get, and a 0.5 score right here would mean that even if a grandmaster coach would sit next to me in every single training session, my methods couldn't be improved.

Perfect training would mean that, whoever you think is the world's best chess coach could sit next to you and your training wouldn't look as much different. Again, that's a [00:14:00] very extreme score. So, I guess you wouldn't have 0.5. And so here's how to assess, starting from a perfect 0.5.

Let's talk about the three important areas of your chess training. Start with tactics. Do you calculate the solution fully, then write down your solution, and only after writing down your solution to the puzzle, check the answer or execute the move, if you do it online.

If you don't do that process and we'll talk about another time why this is so important. If you don't do this process you have to subtract 0.1 or 0.2 from your score. Now, let's talk about openings. Do you learn openings with plans and ideas? Or do you feel lost when your opponent deviates from theory?

So, you just know "My opponent is supposed to do [00:15:00] this, this is theory, this is theory." When they do something else, you're like "Holy cow, what am I supposed to do now?" So, if you understand plans and ideas in your openings and you're not scared when your opponent goes somewhere else, then great, you can keep your score.

If you just memorize blindly or you have absolutely no idea how to study openings in the first place, then you can subtract 0.1 points from your score. Now, let's get into game analysis. Do you analyze all of your games, identify your mistakes, and understand why you made them and how to avoid them in the future?

If you don't have a thorough game analysis, subtract 0.1. If you don't even analyze all of your games, or maybe don't analyze any of your games, subtract 0.2. Again, a low score is normal here, and it isn't a sign of failure. It's a sign of potential. [00:16:00] Remember, going from 0.1 to 0.2 is not just a 0.1 change, but it's a 2x change in your chess improvement.

So, you're doubling your chess improvement score, which should down the line also double your chess improvement when it comes to rating and results. So, if you have a low score, you just have a lot of potential.

Now let's talk again about an overview of what scores would mean what, and I go again into the excellent, which I call "the pro", which would be 0.8-1. 

Then I get into "better than almost anyone", that would be good enough, but also it's better than almost anyone, 0.5 till 0.7. And then red flag, that's anything below 0.5. Let's get into it. 

The pro. This is how I managed to improve more than any [00:17:00] other professionals, or more than many other professionals with only two to three hours of training per day.

Because I had my traumatic brain injury, I couldn't focus as much, so I had to get the most out of little time every day. That's exponential improvement with less time than your competitors. 

Better than almost anyone would be 0.5 to 0.7 scores. And it's my initial goal for you guys when you study my content, when you get into my courses, and even one on one coaching clients, when they get to me, I usually take them from an absolute horrible score.

And I'm saying, " Now, let's get to a good enough, better than almost anyone score, and then we can figure out the nuances that you actually get on a level with how I trained when I was a pro." 

And then we get the red flag. This is anything below 0.5. And honestly, [00:18:00] I think that's where nearly everyone is stuck.

You're in good company. More than 80% of chess improvers are stuck here. That's why so many are frustrated despite putting in dozens of hours. It's not that you're broken, your habits just aren't optimized. Nobody taught you how to focus or study chess the right way. Now this is your chance to fix it.

When I started working with David, for example, as a private student, he spent roughly 30 hours a week on chess, but his "how" score was an absolute red flag. Now he spends a third of the time with a good enough score and gained 70 rating points in just two months. Before joining me to work together, he has lost a hundred points in a month or so.

So, we are getting [00:19:00] back to his all time high and then we want to push further. So, improving your "how" score, improving your focus and how you study chess, what habits you have when you study chess, and what you're doing is really pushing you to train less, but improve more. It's all about quality and not yet how much time to put in.

But once you have a better "how" score, once the quality is better, you can work on the quantity. That is what we will talk about next week. Work on the time you put in every single week, how you can be consistent, how you can find more time in your day, just habits to increase the amount of time you spend on chess.

But you should only do that once your training is decently focused, because otherwise, frankly, you're just wasting your time. 

And [00:20:00] one single thing before I let you go is that it's always your choice how you react to podcasts like this. You might feel a little bit exposed, or frustrated. You just heard that your score, if you calculated it, might be zero, or it might be negative. It's okay. Feeling this way means that you are ready for change. 

Just imagine finally breaking through your plateau. Imagine a training plan where every hour counts, where you put in the right quality, so you're not wasting time anymore. That's what happens when you improve your how.

It's really not about working harder. It's about working smarter. It's your decision. Do you want to complain, say, "Hey, I can't focus better. I have kids. I have this, I have that. I'm just a victim. I will never improve that "how" score. Why did you expose me like that?" 

[00:21:00] Or do you take it as motivation and say, "Oh my God, I just got my eyes opened. I really want to fix this. I want to improve my "how" score. And when I do that, my chess will get better. And I will finally be able to break through a plateau." 

It's your move. decide what you want to do, and then we hear each other next week for the last part of the chess improvement equation, how much time you put in every single week.