My life journey with Chess and beyond.

 Last few years especially since the start of 2018 has been increably challenging in many ways. I came out of the so call comfort zone and took the path which I wanted to take for a while. From the start I had to deal with things I wasnt ready for.  Had it took off and went into another direction I may have been okay but it slowly drifted into unexpected areas. I sort of waited on the launch pad for quite sometime and it frustrated me.

As it took off finally in another direction, I landed in an expected place - Bangalore, living at a PG. I knew no one in Bangalore and wasn't took keen in exploring the city. Thats when I found Agadmator on youtube and my journey with Chess started. 

I used to spend my evenings going through chess game analysis for like 3 to 4 hours everyday and the interest kept going.Whenever I found time, I quickly logged into Chess.com and played games. Even though I created chess.com login in 2014, I played very few games till then but suddenly started playing 10/20 games per day.

In the last 3 years, I played more than 8000 games and gained in rating from 800 to 1300 points. Thanks to corona lockdown I had lots of time and it helped. My love for chess kept growing and I am follow Anish giri, Agadmator, Chessbase India, Gotham Chess, MVL to name a few and still exploring for other interesting streamers.

I follow chess tournaments more regularly like the world chess championship 2018, Candidates tournament 2020, Tata steel masters 2021 to name a few with a lot of interest.

I explored various openings over a period of time.  I would want to be good at opening theory of a few and currently looking at the london system and the sicilian defence with white and black respectively. Anand's autobiography is another thing of interest. It has good reviews, lets see how good it is. I don't know what is the role of chess in my life but it is interesting. Lets see where I get to with my Chess journey.

+ & -

No matter what they speak every decision is based on the profit/result/benefit of the company and rightly so. Even if a company is established without profit as its priorities would seize to stay in the long run considering the amount of competion and the choice available to consumers. Hence the company has to maximize profits with what every customers they could get which meant a small raise in prices and decrease in the cost would increase the margin of profit. The reduction of costs would mean reduction in captial which would effect the raw material and labour costs. Since the raw material cant be reduced in size and quality this reduction in capital would impact the labour costs which is exactly where the employee comes in. Reduction in labour costs meant lesser hikes and expecting better performances out of them all the time. This leverages the amount spent on labour. Since perks are a priority for an employee it leads to attrition.

Mistakes and learnings in the last year/couple of years.

All these years of my academic career I have been an avg/above avg performer and once in a while wondered what it takes to achieve excellence.Thanks to some of the myths this always remained a secret to me. I always used to think how can a person enjoy his life so much and even then excell in studies so much and decided that it is his talent that makes him successful and since I have always felt that I am not a genius(i still believe now)  and hence had the job of clapping for some one else most of the time.
And these two years in chennai and a couple of years eariler I tried to compete at the highest level and failed most of the times and the suceess which everyone wants has eluded me.
But on reading a wonderfull book and noticing a few ppl who have excelled in various walks of life I have realised a pattern that most of them follow.

• The achievers did what they did for the right reasons.

              Most of the time we do things just because some other people have done it and succeeded, my be because it is easy or may be because it was forced onto us.
             All these years I have noticed that the ppl who have succeeded have always loved what they did and not because of some one else's opinion.

• Even though any pursuit is to reach a destination doing something and expecting a result can cause problems.

           No matter which field it is there are always more ppl and less number of resources which are covted.So it goes without saying that there will surely be a few ppl in fact a chunk of people who cannot make it no matter how much effort they have put in. Since doing a work needs skill and knowlege. The former takes considerable amount of time invested by practising regularly. So it is rest assured that result might take time as there will be people with same level of knowledge who are more skilled at using it just because of the amount of time they have already spent on it.
          So the result orientation which has been the way of life for a long time will not work and patience is necessary.

• A humanbody and mind has a limit of its own.

            No matter how good a person is every human has a limit and it has to be accepted and should always be used in the best possible manner and accept the result that comes along and move on.

• The attitude.

           I think by this time everyone knows that attitude is key and all but how exaclty it should be is not clear. Here is what I have observed. The object/place of pursual is the most important thing and at the same time not so important. In the other words we have to give ourselves the best possible chance of getting the result by preparing as much as we can and yet leave the rest and believe that the efforts will not go waste and there will be a day where we have acquired the required skills and knowledge to go through.

• Preparation

           This is the most important part  of going through the finish line. The best preparation is to keep playing in the conditions as close to THE day as possible and kept playing there. This will make ourself adapt to the regurs of the day and helps us handle it better. So the best way to coup with hot sun is to keep staying in the sun as much as possbile and as regularly as possible to adapt to it.
            Preparation has two parts viz., planning and execution. The planning is something which has to be done based on the real senario considering all the things that might come up, the odds against and should give a clear picture of what needs to be done and at the same time should give flexibility to the target achieved which gives space to any unplanned activity which might creep in. Execution is as important as planning as without execution no matter how good a plan is, is a waste. So while executing the plan which has taken into consideration all the odds should be stuck at all costs and failing to execute in a good percentage of the targets will result in a result which is not good enough!

Cheers!

New year - celebrated with euporia; life moves on anyway!

New year is a time where people generally typically call up long time friends,well wishers,relatives to wish them. Many of them welcome the new year with nostaligic feelings of the year went by and excited about the next one.New wishes, desires,resolutions are set with great joy.
Life becomes normal the next day,people go back to business. Cellphones ring lesser and wishes even lesser.The resolutions made are followed by some,may be in parts and some leave them as desires and make them up the next year once again.
At this junture, I would like to set a few things for myself and let me see how I move as the year goes along.This year being by 25th year is really important for me professionally and also personally,for I have a aspirations to start with and I would like to move towards in a more organised way.And personally I have always been my best when I'm living in the present and never worry about the result and following this for the last couple of years has been anything but easy.
So here are the things that I would like to follow in the next couple of years and hope this works.
Time - I have is very precious and so I would like to reduce my activites so that I can spend quality time on the few things that I have to do.
Health - Since coming out on my own, concentration on health has taken a back seat and the results have come out last year despite some effort it imporved a little but I feel they have to reach better standards.
Activites - I like interacting with a lot of people,know about various personalities,follow sports.I would like to increase my reading time and start writing more for I have started writing very recently and I see myself getting better at this in the time to come. I somehow have to break things down into smaller ones which I see quite closely like a weekly basis and measure how things are going at the end of the week also identify them. I would like to involve myself only in some particular activites and avoid social media as much as possible.
Finally I want to conclude saying that I have to keep things simple and be more optimistic! The year 2010 has been extremely tough,2011 eased out a bit and by mathematical logic,common sense and optimism in me concludes that 2012 would be even better!
Cheers!!

Being good at learning something is a skill or a virtue?

Learning is something which we do generally in life multiple times. We do learn lot of things and are interested in learning different things.However everyone has their own way to learn anything .Some are very good and learn things fast and some are a little slow.So this brings us to the question, is learning a skill or is it a virtue ?

I believe that learning fast is just a skill.Most of the people who learn something fast must be following some process by which they make learning anything easier and others.So if you ask me, how do you think one can read something understand it and then able to memorise it for a long time? Well, this is how they probably do it.

After just one reading of anything without any conscious effort of memorising, if we try to recollect what we have read, we get to grasp may be 5-10 % of the actual conept.But now if we try and read with an intent to know what are the main points we have missed, we would tend to grasp things better.

Now, the idea in here is to get something like an image of what ever we are reading, so that we are just placing the points in that mind image.Now for the 2nd time we could surely get a better idea that then earlier reading.So now you have got a rough idea of what the author is trying to say.Now we can make a note of what the key points are in the note are. Now if you can just remember this sequence and understand these points clearly, we can remember anything and also quite easily recollect.Doing something like this is important because you actually remember a lot lesser that what the author is trying to and and since you are trrying to pick up the key points you would remember it better.

Why is it revising in the middle a better way to learn? Here is a story.Two men joined a plantation where their work is to cut off trees and who ever cuts more would get more money.Both started by cutting 10 trees in 8 hours.Now slowy the 2nd person among them even though didnt spend any extra time was able to cut more trees than the 1st one. The 1st one gets motivated to do better but could not get good results like the 2nd one. So once these two guys met and the 1st one enquired about the 2nd one's secret and the 2nd one said this "After successfully cutting a tree I spend some 10 minues in sharpening the axe I have so that my efficiency is better". So we can infer that revising things while we are learning something, gives better results.

Multitasking helps you manage time better!

Time management, as these words clearly say managing the time available.In here,I have used the word available because time is something which is not what we have in abundance and it is extremely important that we use it in the best possible manner.Ok, now enough of stories and back to business.

From the time since I have started seriously into studies, I have found that I have a lot more to do than and the available time is less than that and I always wished that I had 26 hours a day which might help me finish everything.Apparently its an impossible one to be fulfilled, I have started experimenting with things,by which how this could be manage.I have clearly realised two things are very important for this to happen.

Firstly, its very important that you clearly know what you want to do in advance in a day and also in a position to decide which ones are of higher priority and which ones are a little lesser.So that you have a fare idea of what are the things which you must do for sure. Its would be even better if you could jot them down in brief.You know what are suppose to do in priority order things get a little easier.

Secondly the tougher one is executing part of your list.This is where most of the planning is involved.
The works that you do may be different and needs you hand,legs,mouth,brain to interfere at different times for them to get compelted.If we start doing things one by one it takes more time than usual so its important that we multi-task.The point which I have discussed just now seem trivial but the most  important one as far as managing time is concerned.Its important that you segregate roughly into physical and mental activites and multitask them.

Take for instance my typical day start in the evening, the moment I return home from office.I had this habbit of switching the TV and start flipping channels with the advent of rest before I start any work.This is something which I later felt is a problem. Instead of switching on the tv, I quickly change my dress into my track and start with a physical activity like pressing my dress for the next day,washing my under-pants,cleaning my room etc depending upon the list prepared. Having said that I do not do everything at once. I make sure that I do not take more than 20 minutes for this. I generally exercise in the evening everyday if I can because I comeback walking and so I do not need any warm up. Now I go for a bath and in 30 mintues I am fresh and can start some activity which needs more mental thinking and more of a sedentary work.

I never stretch typically for more than 1 hr and take 10 min break. In the mean time I continue my physical work which do not need any concentration and relaxs my brain quite a bit and since physial parts have been resting for 1 hr and so are quite ready for some physical work. But this we can work continuously.This is quite an advantage because sitting at a place for more than 1 hour causes lower back pain and also brings down the concentration and might feel sleepy at time and this list goes on by doing physical work in the middle it compements the body and brain quite well.

I wake up early in the morning and I brush and sh*t at a time which saves 10 minutes of my time and since my dress is pressed and kept ready,I dont need much time to prepare for going back to office in the morning.Since we just wake up early in the morning we might just take more time in the morning than what we actually take in the evening and so we can work better and do more in the available time.

Thus,mutitasking by switching between physical work and mental work parallelly and also if possible doing 2 physical works at a time leaves more time for us and hence better management.

Cheers!
 JKV

Lemon grass..

Hi,

I went to mumbai recently and was having tea at a road side shop and ordered for special tea.
that fellow was preparing tea and started adding ginger pieces which is quite normal.
And then I noticed him adding some grass and I was kind of surprised to see how can grass mix with tea.

My collegue said it is Lemon grass. (Nimma gaddi in telugu) and it adds a flavour to tea. And it really added taste indeed. Its was really nice.

Try adding some ginger and lemon grass when ever you get to find it. It is really nice!

Cheers!!