Garry Kasparov's
How Life Imitates Chess
in a nutshell:
- review
- challenge resources
- confidence, or decisions delayed (then time crunch/stress)
- analysis of decisions & effect
- focus on results
- hard work
- self awareness & consistency: steady effort pays off
- experiment/push boundaries of capacity
- motivate yourself to push though
- small steady increments can lead to large gains (1 hr a day on activity X)
- worse type of mistake from habit - it makes you predictable
- "clock vs. board time" - number of steps to accomplish an objective...
- improve, swap or eliminate "bad pieces"
- spending time only useful if it will improve things
- imbalance: lack of symmetry that can be exploited for advantage
- accurate evaluation key: focus on each choice, prune poor choices, spend time considering good options
- don't over extend, don't ignore imbalances
- power of surprise strong: spend time thinking/learning to find new ideas
- break down your skills/performance - where strong? Weak? Enjoy? Shy away from?
- big branches on decision tree - forks with no way back. Spend careful time on these decisions.
- always valuable to ask - can I reverse course if the decision turns out poorly?
- if no benefit to making the decision now and no penalty in delaying, use time to improve your evaluation, gather information, examine other options
- err on side of intuition and optimism
- be aggressive with self-criticism
- take the initiative - self pressure
- complacency - lack of vigilance -> mistakes & missed opportunities: train yourself to want to improve even when things go right
- essential to have benchmarks to keep yourself alert
- create goals & standards - then keep raising them
- compete like you are an underdog
- find ways to maintain concentration & motivation - key to fighting complacency
- keep track of time - how much time a week doing irrelevant item X? target reducing this.
- lose as much as you can take (push yourself)
- if its been a while since you experienced the nervous thrill of trying something new, perhaps you've been avoiding challenge for too long
- the moment you believe you are entitled to something is the moment you are ripe to lose it to someone who is fighting harder
- pride in achievement mustn't distract from ultimate goals
- results are what matter in the end - concrete objectives and measure
- accept responsibility for results. Every decision made builds character and forms basis of future decisions.
- engaging with your weak points & drilling down so we understand them is best & fastest way to improve.
- good decisions: calculations, creativity, & desire for results.
The book is a pleasant and easy read. Traditional good advice, from a successful person and an interesting perspective. Well worth reading - most of us
know this stuff, but it is always worth repeating for the positive reminder and push. The strength of the book is the concise and well presented overview of basic strategies for success, retold with an entertaining metaphor of "life~chess".
