How to Get Good at Chess, Fast. Edit: This article on chess improvement was unexpectedly popular, reaching #2 on Hacker News and being linked to on LifeHacker.
Thanks for your patience as I work through all the comments and emails I receive. Last updated: July 27, 2017 There are many misconceptions about rapid chess improvement. In this post I’m going to lay out a simple but effective way to get good at chess, fast. This system is based on lessons learned from my own chess improvement and from coaching others. What does it mean to be “good” at chess? Magnus Carlsen’s meteoric rise to the top ranked player in the world (at age 19), the highest chess rating in history (age 22), and as of a few days ago, the title of World Chess Champion (age 22) has brought with it a renewed interest in chess. In the context of discussions about Magnus Carlsen, many people mentioned that they enjoyed playing chess but quit because of the sheer time commitment it took to get “good.”
Results with this system The system Playing Tactics Analysis. Attitude Determines Success. The results of your actions have little to do with what you are actually doing and almost everything to do with your attitude.
Which is ironic because we spend most of our time creating lists and getting organized and listing resolutions about what we should be doing, forgetting that who we are being is much more important. That’s why we’re called human beings. Not human doings. Your life is full of things that you do. Your business and family and community demand that you do certain things. But doing can mask the hollowness of just going through the motions. If you believe that your best days are ahead of you, then you’ll find a creative solution to even the worst circumstance.
You can put on a happy face temporarily when you’re in front of the right people, but your attitude is what determines the decisions that no one else sees until it’s too late. The 12 cognitive biases that prevent you from being rational. The Interview Question That's Always Asked (and How to Nail It) The 7 Sneakiest Ways Corporations Manipulated Human Behavior. #3.
Alka-Seltzer Doubles Their Dosage With a Theme Song Aqualux Alka-Seltzer is one of those weird products that seem to have no competitors. It comes with two tablets you drop into a glass of water, they dissolve, you drink it, you feel better. You may only know Alka-Seltzer as a slayer of hangovers, but if you are old enough to remember the 1970s and 1980s, you remember their TV ads absolutely bombarding prime time television. GettyOnly the best ads provoke the sinking feeling that someone might be screwing with you. Two tablets, that's all it takes. The Deviously Simple Plan: Up until the 1960s, the instructions only said to use one tablet, and that's all they showed people doing in the ads. Getty"How do we give kids more heartburn? This is when inspiration struck: tell people to use two tablets, even if they didn't need to. Thus was born the "plop, plop, fizz, fizz" campaign, aka one of the greatest and most terrifying ad campaigns of all time: #2.
Getty Getty"Johnnie Walker? #1. The Most Important Predictor of Sales Success - Philip Delves Broughton. No profession in business has a more complex reputation than sales.
When we think of salespeople — from Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman to Donald Trump to Steve Jobs — all kinds of contradictory ideas and images jangle in our minds. They can be persuaders and bullies, seducers and rogues, dream-makers and charlatans. But without them, no business exists. It’s not just salespeople who must sell. Entrepreneurs must persuade others of the value of an idea or company which has yet to take concrete form. Sales is the most human and richly nuanced aspect of business and yet, amazingly, is not even a required course at most business schools.
But as one great salesman told me, sales is the greatest laboratory there is for understanding human nature. I began my journey in a Moroccan souk, an ancient marketplace where people must look each other in the eye over a pile of goods and decide whether to buy or sell, without the cover of email or conference calls. Why Smart People Fail.