5 years ago I first created my chess account on lichess.org. All I knew was how the pieces moved. Nothing more.
Forks, skewers, pins, en passant, Sicilian dragon, and fried liver all meant nothing to me. But for some reason I wanted to start playing chess.
I wasn’t even being influenced by anyone or anything.
No streamers, YouTubers, influencers I followed, or friends I had actively played chess. It was just a sudden urge. I have those sudden urges to learn something new quite frequently. But I started playing chess.
By now I’ve reached 1800 ELO. That’s an intermediate chess player if you were wondering. The problem is that I’ve been around that rating for quite a while now.
Sometimes I lose 50 points. Sometimes I gain 50. I plateaued.
This hasn’t been the first time though. Chess is a plateau-heavy game as I like to call it. When you start playing you’ll quickly rise (or drop) to your current skill level. Then you plateau.
You don’t move around much. Because that’s how good you are. You also don’t get better by “just playing”. You get better by deliberately practicing. That’s different.
Over the years I’ve often spent long periods of time where I was blitzing (playing 3-minute games) regularly.
But I didn’t make any progress.
I wasn’t analyzing them. I wasn’t trying out new strategies.
I stayed the same level. Until I decided to deliberately practice instead of merely playing. But there’s something unique about this process.
When it starts, you’ll actually first lose ELO.
Yes. You’ll get worse. That’s because you’re trying out new strategies. New openings. New playing styles. Styles you aren’t familiar with.
So you’ll perform badly.
That is. Until it finally clicks. Then suddenly your ELO soars. You’ll start winning game after game. You’ll rise far above the previous rating you’ve had. You’ve officially gotten better.
Then you’ll plateau once more. And the process starts all over again.
I don’t expect you to believe me without any proof to back up this claim. So here’s the graph depicting my rating changes over the last 2 years. Notice where I added the red rising lines. There’s almost always a green declining line in front of it. That’s this exact process in action.
Why am I sharing this? Well I’m not changing my niche to becoming a chess coach. Don’t worry. It’s not that I want you to start playing chess or anything. No.
It’s simply because this process is universal.
Most people plateau in life or improve extremely slow. So slow you can’t even notice they’re improving at all. That’s because there’s no deliberate practice. There’s no experimentation with new methods.
Take writing emails for example. Everyone says to just start writing. And yes that’s true.
But you need to be deliberate with it.
You need to reflect on your writing. You need to think actively about what you’re writing, who you’re writing to, what your writing has to accomplish, and whether that’s indeed the case.
Do you see why I started writing daily emails now as well? I experimented with weekly ones for 3 months. I learned a fair bit writing those. Now it’s time to experiment with daily ones.
Will my metrics suffer? Yes. Yes they will. I’ve been getting more unsubscribes. A lower open rate. And the overall quality of my emails has probably gone down. (I think I’m doing a good job with these so far, but what do I know?)
The point is. That doesn’t bother me.
I know I have to get worse. I know I’ll suck at it. But I also know that at some point. It’ll just click. All the pieces will fit together. And I’ll become better than I have ever been.
That’s the universal principle of improvement.
So think to yourself. Have you been analyzing your positions and testing out new openings? Or have you merely been blitzing chess games every day?
Let me know what you’ve been practicing lately. And how you’re going about it. What is keeping you from obstructing your own growth? Simply reply to this email.
I’d love to know.