Many chess improvers are frustrated. If you were fully satisfied with your progress, you wouldn’t be here reading this.
More than the lack of results, I believe a wrong mindset is the main cause of this frustration. As you’ll soon see, even someone winning 200 points a year probably has a mostly negative experience with chess.
In today’s article, I will show you why the most common mindset in society is a trap—and how you can escape it.
+200 points, but feeling bad
Unless you start from below 500 Elo, winning 200 points a year is a big success. But as mentioned before, this doesn’t guarantee a positive experience.
Chess improvement isn’t linear. Very often, it comes in quick jumps followed by a long plateau. A +200 point year can look like this:
- Jumping 50 points in 1 week
- Plateau for 12 weeks
- Jump 50 points in 1 week
- Plateau for 12 weeks
Repeat that twice more, and you’ll get to 52 weeks a year.
If you take joy only out of your results—society’s main trap—you will be frustrated for 48 weeks (“Why am I not improving!”) and happy for only 4 weeks.
That’s a 12:1 ratio, which means you’ll feel good about your chess roughly 8.33% of the time. Quite miserable.
Most give up in the first or second 12 weeks.
As if this weren’t bad enough, nearly nobody gets to reap the rewards of their work during a plateau because they give up earlier or later. It is damn hard to do the right training with the right focus when you feel down because of your lacking results. Motivation only takes you so far.
At some point, you’ll feel you are wasting your time and tell yourself chess improvement just isn’t for you. Or you get persuaded by FOMO marketing and start buying quick-hack courses promising you quick and easy rating gains.
Most of you reading this have been through such a phase and now really want to stick to your chess training routine. But the question is how?
Enjoy The Process
Experienced athletes often say they focus on taking it game by game and trusting the process. While this may sound clichéd, it’s the only way to stay motivated during challenging periods.
Even the best of the best face plateaus, hardship, and periods where they are disappointed more often than they are happy. Especially in those times, they need to focus on what they can control: their process.
In my 7 years working with a sport psychologist, nearly everything we discussed centered on this one main topic. Two critical questions had to be answered:
- How can I enjoy the process of improving myself without getting frustrated by the lack of positive results?
- How can I trust my process and give my best even when things are going great?
Taking joy in doing the right thing
The answer is: by getting most of my joy out of doing the right thing.
Instead of being overjoyed after winning a game, I had to get joy from attempting to solve tough positions.
With a little distance, I see that this change has been a major contributor to anything I’ve achieved during and after my career. Don’t get me wrong, I still fall into the result-focused trap (too) often. But when I realize and focus on the process, I immediately start enjoying my life more—and, funnily enough, get better results.
Now, I also realize that the same process helps in any other area of life.
My good friend Dror, an excellent Executive Coach, answers the following question every single day:
- Did I do my best today to…?
Answering yes to that question is the joy he gets from sticking to the process.
Make your switch now
As Dror has taught me, there are two ways to change your behavior:
- Working on your mindset. Then, the correct mindset will help you do the right things.
- Doing the right things. Your mindset will adjust with time.
I tend to be an overthinker, so I’m very good at working on way 1 without getting to the action phase. Recently, I’ve dabbled with the second way, and I have to say it works pretty well.
Here is how you apply this to your own chess:
- Train with focus daily.
- End each day by asking: Did I give my best to improve my chess today?
Ready to take the next step?
If you’re ready to embrace this mindset but aren’t sure how to create a high-quality chess training routine, Next Level Training is here to guide you.
It teaches you how to focus better, avoid distractions, and make the most of your time—covering everything from tactics and openings to game analysis.
Join 800+ students who are following the right process and start embracing both the plateaus and jumps.
With or without Next Level Training, you will sometimes have to say you didn’t do your best today. That’s okay. Nobody is perfect. But trust me, the yeses will be more frequent than 8.33%.
Keep improving,
Noël
PS: This article was initially sent out to my Newsletter list. If you want to get chess improvement advice for free in your inbox, join 17,000+ chess improvers by signing up for Friday Grandmaster Insights here.
