KMKY 11: Making Artur tiny

 

Make your habits so tiny that completing them is faster than debating whether or not to do them.

- Neal Bruce

We need to talk about Neal's tiny habit.

The idea is extremely simple. You get big tasks done by breaking them down into individual pieces that are small enough and easy enough to achieve that this actually happens.

The technicalities you can get elsewhere. If you want more theory follow Neal on twitter and have a look at the free sample of Fogg’s or one of the other similar books available online.

What I want to talk about today is how you apply the theory to Yusupov.

Yusupov is a big ask. 10 books. For most of us, for me anyway, completing the series is an undertaking of several years.

So how to break it down? Clearly the Fundamentals/Beyond the Basics/Mastery division is nowhere near what we’re looking for. Taking each book one at a time is still working with units that are much too large a to be helpful.

Chapters? On a good day, yes, I can complete a chapter quite comfortably. The point of habits, though, is to lock in behaviour that happens every day and not just those when we’re on top of our game. So I still need to go smaller.

Each chapter has several examples on the theme covered. Some of them could work, but not all of them. The analysis of Yusupov - Miles, the first game looked at in Chapter 11 The semi-open file, takes a couple of pages. That’s more than I can be sure I’ll be able to look at every day regardless of what else is going on for me.

How about I commit to attempting one of the puzzles in the chapter exam I’m next due to take? That’s getting there. Especially if instead of taking the puzzles in order that they’re published I look to do one of those Yusupov has graded on the easier end of the spectrum.

But what if there are no 1-star problems remaining and I’ve only got those graded 3-stars or more left to do?

I think I have the solution.

I’ve been keeping a list of all the test positions I’ve looked at that I’ve either failed to find the right move or haven’t scored all the points available for some reason.

My Yusupov habit for the next month is going to be to review one of those each day. That should be tiny enough. We’ll see.

POSTSCRIPT:

I didn’t haven’t yet finished Tiny Habits. It’s not so much I didn’t like the book/wasn’t finding it helpful. It’s more … how to put this … It’s more that I find the author was really getting on my tits.

Not to worry. As it happens, Neal has a solution for getting through books too.