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3AM Speed Chess Focus
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Long Street, the main party street in Cape Town, is characteristically alive. It’s 3AM.
An unusual buzz engulfs a table outside The Dubliner, “The Irish Pub” – karaoke hotspot for drunken locals and tourists alike on the palatably vibrant Long Street, thick with every type of colour, sound and smell.
I weave through the hoard of gleeful spectators to see that the table is strewn with pitchers of beer, full and empty shooter glasses, a battered wooden dual clock speed timer and in the centre of the table, lit up by the saturated focus of the cheerleading crowd and two heated competitors, a chess board.
The competitors are immersed in the game, quickly moving their pieces before smashing the wooden stopwatch to start the other player’s timer. Intellectual Spartans. They’re playing really fast. If your clock runs out of time, you lose.
Speed chess.
My friend and I sat down and dived into the flow of it.
The one player, the star player, deeply concentrated on the game in-between accepting exaltations for his clear upper-hand by accepting drinks and hi-fiving his fans, was from Zimbabwe. He made brilliant moves in less than a second, a chess protégé.
Fast-forward a while and I’m thrusted into the challenger’s seat by the cheer of the crowd and the forceful pat-on-the-back of my friend. I’ve been told that my dad used to play chess in the parks of London for days in a row, a chess hustler and I used to play when I was little so I was excited, my excitement tinged with the pressure of the crowd and the look on the protégé’s face after he had just beaten my friend having given himself 5 minutes of play time versus my friend’s 10 minutes worth of moves, noting that while the protégé’s clock was running he went to the bathroom and still checkmated my mate with 2 minutes to spare.
The protégé, high in the cloud of victory and stardom, and probably a little celebratory alcohol bought by fans, sparked the air by saying he’d give himself only 1 minute against my 10 minutes of play time.
We played. It was intense and thrilling, especially with the crowd dissecting every split-second decision in their time-leisure after I had hurriedly made my moves to beat the clock. I didn’t do as badly as I, and everyone else, thought I would. We were piece-for-piece in the last stages of the game, the protégé with a slight positional advantage but it wasn’t looking so bleak for me – when one of the spectators screamed “times up!!” I had won.
It wasn’t a fair victory in my opinion since the protégé had egotistically given himself only a minute’s worth of moves but I had a startling realisation.
I had a mind-blowing epiphany about focus.
When you play speed chess, you have a limited amount of time to make your choice of move. Your focus is spread over a very small period of time, so you focus more. You strip the contents of your mind down to the absolute essential task and intensely focus on it.
The more time you give yourself to do something, the more you spread your focus out over the allotted time.
The other thing is that the more time you give yourself to do something, the more complex you make the task and the more important it seems and the higher your expectations become of how good it must be since you’ve spent so long on it.
The solution is to set short and explicitly defined deadlines.
This stops you from making the task seem more important by finding other related things to do to fill the time. Things almost never take as long as we think they will, we just tell ourselves that they will take long to delay and to not have to focus. But sharp focus feels great, it makes you feel alive…and it helps you get things done in less time.
Giving yourself more time to do something waters-down your focus.
…I’m off to play some speed chess.
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Alex
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very true i think.. interesting article!
i said i’d take a look! very cool site!
-ceili (’mean girl’) haha
Thank you ceili dearest.
you’re not mean, you’re just feisty. but i still love you.
grrr.
alex
Dude what a power post. WOW. They just keep getting better my man. Very solid and awesome. I would definitely say the best so far. I particularly enjoyed the vivid account of the Long Street vibe. I can totally picture the scene!
I have to agree focus is key – in a business context, this very idea is used to great effect on big projects and is called milestone planning – whereby you break down all the tasks to complete a project into ‘bite-sized’ pieces to focus on.
Lovin the Awesomeness….
Just
Thanks man. Appreciate it.
Was different to my other posts like that but let the descriptive vivdness deluxe flow. gonna def mix it up more like that in the future.
full true about the bite-sized pieces to focus on.
there are a million things to focus on, but only a few that ought to be focused on.
respecto
alex
Kickass! Your writing’s coming along great. I was engrossed in the story. Very true about deadlines. I was introduced to this topic in The Four Hour Work Week. I’ve used the same idea and it works great. Also, true focus is a whole different ball-game. It makes you lose track of time and pulls your whole brain into the task. Meditation, yoga, running, chess. All of these can be used to sharpen one’s focus.
Ole!
Yeah, 4hww is awwwwwsome. so much value.
def true about yoga, running, chess etc. think it gets you into a certain mode of thinking that helps you in everything you do.
solid stuff.
thanks for the comment bro
Alex
heeey:)
haha sounds awesome, I used to play chess when i was a little kid too, we should play some time:)
I guess there are two lessons here
1 – Never become egotistical (which is hard but something that is good to work on imo)
and 2 – )Speed chess sharpens the mind. hehe
Its good to make decisions, don’t take too long to make them, but don’t be overhasty. Don’t be scared to make wrong decisions, but learn from them as best you can.
Till the next article!
peace1
hey hey
something i’ve never thought about but i could see myself being described here! I will definately give this one a try!
I told you i’d take a look! very insightful site!
- ‘mean girl’ haha
chess protoge? =D
thanks dearest
alex
Great post Ali! Insightful with a badass edge in your writing
Thanks gray deluxe.
experimenting with diff writing styles.
coming together proper.
let’s jam when you’re in town. own the night. glory times.
keep well bro
Alex
Awesome post really,
I also use to play chess wasn’t very good though couldn’t concentrate on the game.
Its so true though focusing for short amounts of time on a certain task usually give you the best outcome.
Although I think its relative to the task, at the very least your solution should solve all of the short term problems. ie whether or not you can defend or attack while taking the least amount of damage / doing the most damage.
In the long run you obviously goal is to win, That can only be done if the short term “moves” where executed correctly while taking into account the next few moves.
I’d rather say take a short amount of time thinking up a solution but always look at the bigger picture before making a short term decision. sometimes the best solution is a little complex
darn i think i rambled a little to much :/
BTW Alex AWESOME SITE!!!!!
Thanks for your comment diren, really appreciate it.
Was a little cautious in writing this because that’s so true that it’s relative to the task. didn’t want to include it and make the post long-winded but it definitely is something to consider. some things need the room afforded by time but in general, directed focus will get more done and allow you to be more productive than waiting around for ideas to hit you.
Thanks for adding to the discussion.
Talk to you soon.
alex
Wow man I really enjoyed that. I was completely enaged while reading that. You did an awesome job there, that guy was full it!:)
When you do something, often you are thinking about the end product.So you’re focus is on the future not in the NOW. You can say that focus is being fully present with what you are doing. When you have a deadline, not a drawn out deadline,and you have to get something done, you become present with getting it done and you don’t allow for any unessary distractions. Thats why having an unlimited time space makes for easy distractions because you’ve got a whole host of things that in that time you can choose to focus on other than your task. The more strong our focus the better the result will be… but focus is not affected by time, therefor instead of drawing out your foucus (time), use it at its max in a short space of time.
My favourite article so far. The idea’s good and the writing was interesting and intense. this must of flowed out of you… I can see you used your own advice here. Dig the title by the way. Sexy.
peaceness
HaHa, yeah, was experimenting with a slightly different style – def gonna incorporate it in future posts.
cool to hear your take on it given you were, uh, there
Really like your take on focus in terms of a now versus later thing. solid stuff.
can’t wait for your blog man!! send me some new articles!!
thanks for the comment as always bro, really appreciate it.
good to hear your perspective
Alex
So true Alexander!
Your writing is fantastic! It really pulls you in. The fact that you pulled your point together around an event in your life makes it so real and engaging.
I look forward to your future posts.
see you around
Lynne
Danky Lynnnieeeee!!!
new posts tomorrow. yay.
no moving in allowed. serious.
Alex
Well done on a truly inspiring post.
Subscribed
Looking forward to reading more.
Best.
Sarah
Thank you sarah, you won’t be disappointed.
Talk to you soon
Alex
WOW! Alex! who knew this was what was lurking under the ‘kink’ facade!! U should really think about forgetting Actuary and taking writing on professionally!!
P.S: Why don’t u send something in to Varsity Newspaper, make people aware of the site.xx
Got nothing but love..hehe
HaHa thank you girlie… i mean “knowledge commons” :p
acsci for life yo. dork club of dreams
i really like your varsity newspaper idea – hadn’t thought about it. will ch-ch-check it out. respect yo.
check back again soon.
Best,
Alex
“He made brilliant moves in less than a second, a chess protégé. ”
“Prodigy”. A protege is one who is being trained or protected.
The essential lesson here is “Thinking is bad.”
Minnesota Fats, billiards artist, was once asked by a TV announcer,
“Fats, do you think you can make this shot?”
Fats replied as he screwed chalk onto his cue tip:
“Thinkin’ is fer chumps. If ya think about it, yer never gonna DO it!”
Then he did it, in one thoughtless motion.
My snake companion, Riley, does not pause to think when he sees the flicker of a mouse’s tail in a corner of his cage. If he did, he would starve.