In How Children Succeed, Paul Tough talks a lot about chess, a full quarter of the book, in fact. But while his stories about chess were interesting, Tough didn’t convince me that teaching kids chess teaches them motivation. But I was able to pick out 5 characteristics for success that chess might be able to teach, that are good lessons in general when trying to reach success.
5 Lessons for Success (from Chess)
5 lessons for success that mastering chess can teach.
- Take responsibility for your mistakes, learn from them, but don’t dwell on them.
- Learn how to separate yourself from your mistakes, that your mistakes are not you.
- The 10,000 hour rule: it takes practice to master something. So you better pick something you’ll enjoy doing for 10,000 hours. (So don’t try doing this with chess if you don’t enjoy it!)
- Instinct and intuition are as important as reason and intelligence.
- To validate a theory you have to first try to prove it wrong, instead of trying to prove it right. This goes against our natural tendency, but gets better results.