Chess Strategies and Life Skills

 Karolyn is writing an article about learning pattern recognition, patience, planning, adapting, weighing tradeoffs, stopping to rethink...

Aleck: Chess? Was that one of the Chinese scholarly skills? Music, games, calligraphy and painting?
Karolyn: In the Chinese pursuits, it was go, not chess.
Aleck: And how do these skills show up in your own life?
Karolyn: Well pattern recognition helped me notice I always procrastinate on Fridays. So I shifted heavy tasks to Thursdays. Mini life-hack.
Aleck: A Thursday Gambit. Strong opening. Planning?
Karolyn: Well, Sanae saved money from her band job as a drummer to buy a motorcycle. And then she learned economics. That was planning, and patience.
Aleck: And adapting quickly? 
Karolyn: My train got cancelled, but instead of spiralling, I reorganised my whole route on the spot. Like abandoning an opening and going positional.
Aleck: Fair enough. Nothing worse than a commute that feels like a zugzwang.
Karolyn: I also used “weighing trade-offs” when deciding whether to take a higher-paying job with a hideous commute. I declined. No point winning a pawn if you lose the endgame. Then other friends pitched in with their stories. Tina offered the “know when to stop and rethink” skill by pausing a career change, stepping back, and avoiding a rushed blunder.
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Voice-over
Aleck adds a contribution by mentioning Jennifer Shahade talking about how chess builds creativity and confidence. Karolyn knows of Jennifer (being a woman chess grandmaster twice) and notes her boldness with calculation, making confident moves based on strategic reasoning. Leads to nurturing intuition.

Dangers of suggesting changes

A cancelled excursion…

Kazuko: I thought you were going to Nikko to see the fall foliage this weekend.

Hiroshi: That was the plan but I made a silly suggestion at the meeting on Thursday.

Kazuko: You were called out?

Hiroshi: I said why don’t we digitize the new product questionnaire and make it online to save meeting time and paper. The chairman said it was a great idea.

Kazuko: You must have got kudos for that? Save resources, shorten meetings? What’s silly about that?

Hiroshi: But then he said, “With your IT experience, you’re the best for the job. Let’s have this ready by next week.” Well, you know how long it takes to get the bugs out of a new piece of software. There went the weekend trip.

Kazuko: I see. No Nikko. No leaves.

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Voice-over

An idea can be given to someone else to suggest. The trick is to get them to be grateful to you for the kudos, while not minding the extra work.