Excellent article. "Cognitive offloading" is too easy these days, downloading to ChessBase and having it analyze the game gives the (inaccurate) impression of having accomplished something. Surprised to see a screenshot from Chessable without credit.
Thank you, Tom! The picture was just to illustrate a series of opening lines and that you need to study the lines actively, didn’t thought it made sense to credit a specific opening course.
A chess player friend who works in tech recommended setting up a repository using Obsidian. After a few hours on YouTube watching “How to use Obsidian” videos, Obsidian proved pretty intuitive. I have used it to create a “knowledge framework” document off of which I hang linked and cross-linked documents covering various topics, and I store diagrams of interesting positions, ideas, slides, summaries of calculating techniques, links to cool articles, etc. in the appropriate documents, adding folders and sub-folders as new stuff comes up.
I go back a revisit it, browsing through it regularly to refresh what I gathered. After about a year it is getting quite big, but because of how obsidian organises it, I find it easy to re-find stuff. I think this is going to be a huge help to me, as I have always quickly forgotten knowledge I have learned, but now I can refresh it.
Excellent review of the literature and drawing the relevance to chess. Perhaps this strand of research is also related to comparisons of (a) typing notes and (b) hand-writing notes in classes, which generally show (IIRC) a benefit from hand-writing notes. Could also argue for (a) making the moves on a physical chessboard rather than a screen or, at least, (b) creating your own PGN, by entering each move, from a Chessable course rather than just playing through the pre-built PGN.
There could be a difference between online and handwritten notes. From my personal experince it feels harder to make handwritten notes. Maybe this could be a subject for a future newsletter! :)
BTW (for those of us that are old enough to remember back when), I think the easiest proof of this is quite simply: "how easy is it for you to memorize your friends' phone numbers now" compared to 25 years ago. But, more on point:
Martin, this is one of my biggest problems in chess. I play games, analyze them, find interesting positions, learn new things, and . . . well, I feel like I'm trying to drink from a firehose. I'm low-level enough that I can easily learn 2, 3, 4 things each game I play (even if blitz). But how in the world can I remember this stuff?
You listed a few games from Sept 25-26 that you can't remember at all. I'm ok with not remembering those games, but I don't even remember the things I learned in them!
OK, so, with openings we have an idea: try to write out your opening book from memory (that seems like a terrific idea!) But what about all the other stuff?
Hi Nova. Maybe one idea could be to keep a journal. Write down one lesson from each game together with a diagram. Make it into a test question. And then test yourself after 14 days - 30 days and try to remember. You could also make it a personal course on Chessable and review it periodically.
I'll think about that. As I just wrote (on twitter to Dan Heisman): "Serious question: at this point (I play a lot, and (as you know!) I miss multiple things per game) it'd easily be 500 pages (not kidding). Will such a thing help? If I review 5 pages every day, I'd only get to each one every 100 days!"
Excellent article. "Cognitive offloading" is too easy these days, downloading to ChessBase and having it analyze the game gives the (inaccurate) impression of having accomplished something. Surprised to see a screenshot from Chessable without credit.
Thank you, Tom! The picture was just to illustrate a series of opening lines and that you need to study the lines actively, didn’t thought it made sense to credit a specific opening course.
The important thing is realising that we have tools to use other that our ability to recall!
Take it from me it is really cool - how we structure it is a very personal (and revealing) thing!
Perfectly okay 😄 just got curious!
😂
A chess player friend who works in tech recommended setting up a repository using Obsidian. After a few hours on YouTube watching “How to use Obsidian” videos, Obsidian proved pretty intuitive. I have used it to create a “knowledge framework” document off of which I hang linked and cross-linked documents covering various topics, and I store diagrams of interesting positions, ideas, slides, summaries of calculating techniques, links to cool articles, etc. in the appropriate documents, adding folders and sub-folders as new stuff comes up.
I go back a revisit it, browsing through it regularly to refresh what I gathered. After about a year it is getting quite big, but because of how obsidian organises it, I find it easy to re-find stuff. I think this is going to be a huge help to me, as I have always quickly forgotten knowledge I have learned, but now I can refresh it.
Do you have a screenshot of how it is structured? I have puzzled with the idea of making something similar in Notion
Excellent review of the literature and drawing the relevance to chess. Perhaps this strand of research is also related to comparisons of (a) typing notes and (b) hand-writing notes in classes, which generally show (IIRC) a benefit from hand-writing notes. Could also argue for (a) making the moves on a physical chessboard rather than a screen or, at least, (b) creating your own PGN, by entering each move, from a Chessable course rather than just playing through the pre-built PGN.
There could be a difference between online and handwritten notes. From my personal experince it feels harder to make handwritten notes. Maybe this could be a subject for a future newsletter! :)
And also thank you for supporting my publication! Really appreciate it :)
BTW (for those of us that are old enough to remember back when), I think the easiest proof of this is quite simply: "how easy is it for you to memorize your friends' phone numbers now" compared to 25 years ago. But, more on point:
Martin, this is one of my biggest problems in chess. I play games, analyze them, find interesting positions, learn new things, and . . . well, I feel like I'm trying to drink from a firehose. I'm low-level enough that I can easily learn 2, 3, 4 things each game I play (even if blitz). But how in the world can I remember this stuff?
You listed a few games from Sept 25-26 that you can't remember at all. I'm ok with not remembering those games, but I don't even remember the things I learned in them!
OK, so, with openings we have an idea: try to write out your opening book from memory (that seems like a terrific idea!) But what about all the other stuff?
Hi Nova. Maybe one idea could be to keep a journal. Write down one lesson from each game together with a diagram. Make it into a test question. And then test yourself after 14 days - 30 days and try to remember. You could also make it a personal course on Chessable and review it periodically.
I'll think about that. As I just wrote (on twitter to Dan Heisman): "Serious question: at this point (I play a lot, and (as you know!) I miss multiple things per game) it'd easily be 500 pages (not kidding). Will such a thing help? If I review 5 pages every day, I'd only get to each one every 100 days!"