Why You Should Get a Coach From the Perspective of a Chess Player
#2 Get a GPS
During my 10+ years of playing chess, I’ve had 3 coaches and each one of them opened up different sides of me, helped me discover new strengths that I thought I never had and pointed out weaknesses I didn’t want to see.
Hadn’t I had them I would have probably been much slower in finding opportunities and becoming a better version of myself.
For this reason, I’m sharing these insights so you can start early, fail early and learn early.
So, what does a great coach do?
They put you on point
Although all 3 coaches were all different, one common pattern among them was always coming out. They could point out directly what I was doing right and wrong.
Why is this important?
It’s generally difficult to juggle multiple sides of you as one person. Thinking of “Was this decision right?” or “Why did I do this” or “What should I do next” are complex thoughts, that might arise 3 times a day and even more hard to answer 1000 times a year.
You need an unbiased individual who watches you and tries to make you a better person by coming up with those thoughts and guiding you towards the answers.
After each chess game, it was expected to analyze the game right away. The way I was analyzing it on my own vs. with my coach was two completely different stories.
When I was alone, I had tendencies to:
- Avoid looking deeply into my mistakes.
- Come up with a narrative for my mistakes.
- Call myself dumb for making those mistakes.
When I was with my coach:
- 80% of the time we looked deeply into my mistakes.
- He would point out my faulty thinking for making mistakes and not calling me dumb for it.
- He would congratulate me on my minor accomplishments even when I had lost the game.
It’s a painful process to acknowledge our mistakes and sometimes our accomplishments. We think they have to be big enough to count them.
All my coaches loved pointing out my mistakes over and over again. I would get tired of that and ask them: “Why are you telling me this again? I heard it so many times already!”, and they would be like “Exactly, that’s why”.
Once is a mistake. Twice is a decision. Any more than that has no chance of being forgiven.
— Said some wise human being.
My coach would also tell me: “You managed to remember the line till the 8th move. Last time you only made it till the 7th. That is some progress”.
You could hear the sarcastic tone in his voice but he meant it. And that meant a lot to me to observe that. I had made a small step towards a win instead of a loss. Remembering one more move than your opponent can decide the game.
They guide you like a GPS
“A good coach is like a GPS for your chess journey, helping you navigate the intricate paths of the game and guiding you toward strategic excellence.”
— Garry Kasparov
Many of us rely on GPS technology in our phones and cars to navigate and track our physical paths. But how likely is it for us to get one to guide us through our life path?
You could argue that you have your friends and family that help you through making better decisions. Fair enough. But, they are biased. And having a too-deep emotional connection can hurt more than help.
The coach, unlike a friend or family member, refrains from imposing their views and prioritizes understanding and questioning to guide you toward your own answers. They do not try to recreate a shadow of themselves.
The other role of the coach is of a meta-thinker. And with that, they are responsible for making you a better meta-thinker as well.
Reflecting on my chess experience, my coaches consistently posed three key questions when analyzing my games:
- “Why did you do this?”
- “How did you arrive at this plan?”
- “What did you expect?”
Coaches are looking to understand where you started and where you ended to make you aware of the mistakes and sometimes the good judgements you made in the process. Think of it as a buggy user flow, and the coach would help you debug it.
When you answer those questions 20 times a week, in 1 year you’d be going through that 1000 times. The beautiful moment is then that you stop relying on a coach for it since it becomes an automatic process in your brain.
Thank you for reading!
I am Olga, a Data Analyst and former chess player. Follow me here on Medium or join my email list for more stories on how to make better decisions in life.
