I finished reading the BASB book a few weeks ago and as I was pretty much clear about building a second brain in my professional activities, I am still pretty clueless in the area of chess.
Taking chess notes in an offline environment doesn't seem efficient to me, and sitting in front of a computer for extra hours (since my job is 100% computer based) - I don't really want to do that. But I guess there's no avoiding it :-)
I will start using Chessbase more and organize not only my games but also my sources of information in it.
You (and Tiago) are right in that one should (not only) in chess only process information that one currently needs and uses. Why to study an opening when there is a 0.1% chance that I will ever play it...
I'd also be interested to know what your work with Notion is like. Please, will you write a post about it sometime? Or make a video?
My chess-related stuff in Notion is pretty rudimentary—the actual chess 'work' is in ChessBase, Notion I use more as a journal where I put some thoughts down (as otherwise I'll forget some important ones), note something down (capturing information) or review and organise priorities, it could definitely be done in other apps or even largely on paper.
A couple of years ago I was trying to record and organise waay too many things in Notion, sometimes doing things in these apps feels useful but sometimes can just distract from you the actual work.
Agreed on likely vs. unlikely openings and lines—at least now we have the tools to see which ones actually come up in practice (OTB & online) and look into those the most.
Indeed! To those who question why one should indulge in any form of meta chess learning activity at all, I would simply ask, "How much are you improving with your current training strategy?"
I suspect that in many cases the answer would be not much, but can you realistically expect serious improvement as an adult anyway? There is a pervasive self reinforcing negative loop in the mindsets of many adults and I believe that has been the biggest area of change in the last twenty years or so.
Barry Hymer and Peter Well's book on Chess Improvement looks at this real depth and there have been a string of wonderful books on the subject of chess training in general (Axel Smith, Davorin Kuljasevic etc). What knowledge management does is make these psychological and practical training systems more efficient.
Well that is what I am hoping for....
Thanks again for your newsletter...it is a consistently top rate read!
Hymer and Wells' Chess Improvement was great, and one of a kind in the realm of chess books—could be a good book to write a review on. Kuljasevic's books are also excellent (I've also studied some of his opening databases).
As you touch on (and Hymer/Wells wrote on superbly), improvement is naturally the focus in the chess world while chess itself and the inherent value or meaning in being able to be absorbed in such an activity is often overlooked. Of course, we all want to do well—but an apt comparison would be those common anecdotes where someone only realises they'd taken the actual day-to-day living, working towards some goal as a means to an end when each of those days is 'life' itself.
"What knowledge management does is make these psychological and practical training systems more efficient." Loved this line. Thanks for the kind words!
Great post! Knowledge management is a very interesting question for chess players to address. Of course many players have opening files, but the idea of managing other areas of chess systematically is interesting. I am an older Adult Chess Improver and I confess doing things digitally is really not that enticing. An alternative worth exploring is adopting the Zettelkasten approach to one's chess learning.
These ideas may be new to many players, but keeping training diaries and notebooks certainly isn't. Approaches like Thiago Forte's or the Zettelkasten approach give much more power and can enable amateurs to start start seeing chess in a more integrated way.
Glad you found it interesting, Neil. Ahh I'd never heard of the Zettelkasten but just had a read of it and it sounds interesting, definitely some similarities with the Second Brain approach!
I suppose it also depends on the person—spending time and energy on these things just doesn't sit well with some people. I've always liked recording things and organising things through writing them down, and for those people (I imagine you might also be one of them), it's always fun to read about new approaches—and in this age, chess information/knowledge could well do with management in a manner that's creatively and intuitively fulfilling for each person.
Nice one Junta. I'm a 'casual' obsidian user. Note-taking enthusiasts often gets obsessed about tools and systems and loses track of actual goals&outputs. As long as people don't lose track to practicalities, some kind of capture/retrieving/synthesis tool is super useful.
Thanks Ben. Obsidian looked nice too, I just happened to come across Notion first.
I hear you! In 2021 I was definitely obsessing about organising everything in Notion, even things I didn't need to. The idea of having everything in one place is nice, but might be too much—as the author of this book might say, putting the focus on making things rather than consuming, and keeping what resonates.
Wow, this is so tantalizing. Very curious about the BASB book, now. I've been experimenting with Anki for reviewing things that have come up in my games. Perhaps I'll separate into decks on phase of game, or themes. Also curious about Notion. I'd be very interested to read more on the nuts and bolts of how you use these products together. In any case, a great read as usual, thanks!
I've seen Anki being mentioned on chess Twitter, I wonder how your experiments have been going—I suppose it takes a bit of time until you can tell if it feels like it might be helping!
In the contexts of what I've written in the post, it might be something like
Capturing information - have been more mindful of saving things that are/might come in useful, in ChessBase and Notion - definitely noticing that I didn't bother to take those extra few seconds to capture things earlier, and lost lots of good materials and resources over years and years
Organising information - organise projects in Notion, brainstorm/take notes on my chess work
Outputting - chess work in Lichess, ChessBase, working on chess books, writing etc.
I guess journaling could be in both organising and outputting. Just have to be careful that these tools make things easy for me, rather than I have to waste time using the productivity tools themselves. :-)
I think this is definitely something lacking in my middlegame work. I'm generally somewhat organised with opening files, but that's pretty much the extent to it.
Although - while I do feel like this would probably be helpful, I can't help but shake that there were many before us who reached levels beyond us, and didn't have any of this.
Yet again, maybe it's just one of these modern things that can only help accelerate the learning process.
For sure. Because so much information is available now, it's easier to improve using all the resources, and there are probably many like me who find it hard to be selective (I'm taking the number of Chessable courses and Modern Chess databases I bought in the last two years to the grave)—for the average person, it's probably not that difficult to quickly up the quality in their training and information/knowledge they consume purely by cleaning up their digital habits a little.
Thank you so much for this article!
I finished reading the BASB book a few weeks ago and as I was pretty much clear about building a second brain in my professional activities, I am still pretty clueless in the area of chess.
Taking chess notes in an offline environment doesn't seem efficient to me, and sitting in front of a computer for extra hours (since my job is 100% computer based) - I don't really want to do that. But I guess there's no avoiding it :-)
I will start using Chessbase more and organize not only my games but also my sources of information in it.
You (and Tiago) are right in that one should (not only) in chess only process information that one currently needs and uses. Why to study an opening when there is a 0.1% chance that I will ever play it...
I'd also be interested to know what your work with Notion is like. Please, will you write a post about it sometime? Or make a video?
Glad you found it interesting, Petr!
My chess-related stuff in Notion is pretty rudimentary—the actual chess 'work' is in ChessBase, Notion I use more as a journal where I put some thoughts down (as otherwise I'll forget some important ones), note something down (capturing information) or review and organise priorities, it could definitely be done in other apps or even largely on paper.
A couple of years ago I was trying to record and organise waay too many things in Notion, sometimes doing things in these apps feels useful but sometimes can just distract from you the actual work.
Agreed on likely vs. unlikely openings and lines—at least now we have the tools to see which ones actually come up in practice (OTB & online) and look into those the most.
Indeed! To those who question why one should indulge in any form of meta chess learning activity at all, I would simply ask, "How much are you improving with your current training strategy?"
I suspect that in many cases the answer would be not much, but can you realistically expect serious improvement as an adult anyway? There is a pervasive self reinforcing negative loop in the mindsets of many adults and I believe that has been the biggest area of change in the last twenty years or so.
Barry Hymer and Peter Well's book on Chess Improvement looks at this real depth and there have been a string of wonderful books on the subject of chess training in general (Axel Smith, Davorin Kuljasevic etc). What knowledge management does is make these psychological and practical training systems more efficient.
Well that is what I am hoping for....
Thanks again for your newsletter...it is a consistently top rate read!
Hymer and Wells' Chess Improvement was great, and one of a kind in the realm of chess books—could be a good book to write a review on. Kuljasevic's books are also excellent (I've also studied some of his opening databases).
As you touch on (and Hymer/Wells wrote on superbly), improvement is naturally the focus in the chess world while chess itself and the inherent value or meaning in being able to be absorbed in such an activity is often overlooked. Of course, we all want to do well—but an apt comparison would be those common anecdotes where someone only realises they'd taken the actual day-to-day living, working towards some goal as a means to an end when each of those days is 'life' itself.
"What knowledge management does is make these psychological and practical training systems more efficient." Loved this line. Thanks for the kind words!
Very useful insights, thanks for sharing!
Glad you found them useful Girolamo!
Great post! Knowledge management is a very interesting question for chess players to address. Of course many players have opening files, but the idea of managing other areas of chess systematically is interesting. I am an older Adult Chess Improver and I confess doing things digitally is really not that enticing. An alternative worth exploring is adopting the Zettelkasten approach to one's chess learning.
These ideas may be new to many players, but keeping training diaries and notebooks certainly isn't. Approaches like Thiago Forte's or the Zettelkasten approach give much more power and can enable amateurs to start start seeing chess in a more integrated way.
Glad you found it interesting, Neil. Ahh I'd never heard of the Zettelkasten but just had a read of it and it sounds interesting, definitely some similarities with the Second Brain approach!
I suppose it also depends on the person—spending time and energy on these things just doesn't sit well with some people. I've always liked recording things and organising things through writing them down, and for those people (I imagine you might also be one of them), it's always fun to read about new approaches—and in this age, chess information/knowledge could well do with management in a manner that's creatively and intuitively fulfilling for each person.
Nice one Junta. I'm a 'casual' obsidian user. Note-taking enthusiasts often gets obsessed about tools and systems and loses track of actual goals&outputs. As long as people don't lose track to practicalities, some kind of capture/retrieving/synthesis tool is super useful.
Thanks Ben. Obsidian looked nice too, I just happened to come across Notion first.
I hear you! In 2021 I was definitely obsessing about organising everything in Notion, even things I didn't need to. The idea of having everything in one place is nice, but might be too much—as the author of this book might say, putting the focus on making things rather than consuming, and keeping what resonates.
Wow, this is so tantalizing. Very curious about the BASB book, now. I've been experimenting with Anki for reviewing things that have come up in my games. Perhaps I'll separate into decks on phase of game, or themes. Also curious about Notion. I'd be very interested to read more on the nuts and bolts of how you use these products together. In any case, a great read as usual, thanks!
I've seen Anki being mentioned on chess Twitter, I wonder how your experiments have been going—I suppose it takes a bit of time until you can tell if it feels like it might be helping!
In the contexts of what I've written in the post, it might be something like
Capturing information - have been more mindful of saving things that are/might come in useful, in ChessBase and Notion - definitely noticing that I didn't bother to take those extra few seconds to capture things earlier, and lost lots of good materials and resources over years and years
Organising information - organise projects in Notion, brainstorm/take notes on my chess work
Outputting - chess work in Lichess, ChessBase, working on chess books, writing etc.
I guess journaling could be in both organising and outputting. Just have to be careful that these tools make things easy for me, rather than I have to waste time using the productivity tools themselves. :-)
Glad you found it interesting.
I think this is definitely something lacking in my middlegame work. I'm generally somewhat organised with opening files, but that's pretty much the extent to it.
Although - while I do feel like this would probably be helpful, I can't help but shake that there were many before us who reached levels beyond us, and didn't have any of this.
Yet again, maybe it's just one of these modern things that can only help accelerate the learning process.
I'm always impressed by your opening videos.
For sure. Because so much information is available now, it's easier to improve using all the resources, and there are probably many like me who find it hard to be selective (I'm taking the number of Chessable courses and Modern Chess databases I bought in the last two years to the grave)—for the average person, it's probably not that difficult to quickly up the quality in their training and information/knowledge they consume purely by cleaning up their digital habits a little.