Following the World Chess Championship, I’m starkly reminded that there are many levels to the game that I will never personally experience. Magnus and Ian are freaks of nature in their ability to recall and analyze hundreds or even thousands of games, to perform deep calculations extremely rapidly, to rival the play of even the most powerful chess engines.
You and I will never be that good.
At the same time, I know perfectly well that I can get much better of chess if I put in the time and effort. A lack of natural talent is not what’s holding me back. In a few months my ELO went from 500 to around 1100, and though it has plateaued lately, I’m fairly sure I can crack 1200 if I learn a few more openings, and maybe even a gambit or two. Of course there is a hard wall out there somewhere, some natural limit that I will never surpass no matter how much I study. But I’m nowhere near that wall. Nor are the vast majority of most people pursuing improvement in any particular skill.
That said, just playing more chess isn’t helping me much at this point. Nor will writing more words make me a great writer. Same for making more beats and becoming a great producer. In those areas, where I’ve achieved some level of basic competence, I’ve already made whatever gains I can make by just doing the thing. To get better, I need to actively study, to learn new techniques, to analyze and correct my weaknesses, and so on. It’s easy and comfortable to believe that doing=training, but it’s a lie.
Active learning is uncomfortable and makes me feel dumb. When I actively learn in chess (by studying and trying new openings, for example), I lose more games, and my rating goes down. When I try to write in a genre besides science fiction, or write music that isn’t dance music, I feel like a fish out water. But those experiments stretch my skill boundaries. And when I come back to my strengths (the London system, science fiction, dance music), I come back with a broader perspective and more tools.
Don’t give up just because you’ll never be the best. Being much better than you are now is achievable, and hugely satisfying.
Rob
Amazing insights and a great reminder all around. Thank you JD!
Padraig
To adapt an old adage: Practice doesn’t make perfect, practice makes permanent. Conscious reflection is as important as doing-the-thing, but there’s still a lot value in pure crude time spent doing whatever pursuit it is one’s seeking improvement in. I guess the secret is to make sure the time ratios are sensible. Too much reflection and too little action are worse than the other way around I think. Perhaps even a tiny little bit of conscious reflection and reappraisal can go a very long way indeed, so long as we keep on pushing on.
With people I know who are very good at what they do (music, writing, etc.), the sheer amount of time they put in to their area is beyond what most people would ever expect. To a certain extent (but perhaps only to a certain extent) quality is born from quantity. When observing these people I admire and who’s work I’m in awe of, I’m also occasionally reminded of this quote from Michelangelo:
“If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.”
Good luck in your pursuits JD, and keep up the good work with the blog!