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Comment by llarsson | Hacker News Reader

Cool that the author does this, and has found a method that works for them! However, to be able to spend 2 hours a day on this seems like an indescribable luxury to me. And the quote about netting about 1.5 ELO per day sounds like a linear growth is assumed, which I can assure will not be the case past the initial massive improvements one gets from "not knowing the rules" to "actually starting to get it".

I love solving the odd chess problem here and there, and I whole-heatedly recommend lichess.org for that. The website and app are both great and the problem database is huge and varied. All free, too.

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> Cool that the author does this, and has found a method that works for them! However, to be able to spend 2 hours a day on this seems like an indescribable luxury to me.

Why? Even full-employed Americans spend 4 hours per day on average on leisure and sport. (https://www.bls.gov/charts/american-time-use/activity-by-emp...)

Studying chess isn't leisure in the same way that watching TV or reading a book or playing a sport are leisure. If you are studying chess with the intention of actually improving your game it requires a lot of mental energy. For a lot of people, it not most people, it would be closer to more work than leisure time.

I also play chess but I don't think of chess as time to unwind. It's definitely fun, but requires a lot of focus and I have to stop playing a few hours before bed so I can actually unwind.

Anything you put "work" in to (like serious hobbies, sports etc.) can still be considered a hobby / leisure. Lots of competitive low end golfers, tennis players, basketball players etc.

I've found it one of the best outlets from work quite frankly, to have another committed side interest that requires dedication and commitment. You should try it :-)

When I studied I worked at a grocery store part time, and found it a very good fit as it was mostly mechanical work requiring very little mental capacity.

After I graduated and got a programming job, I found that my hobbies took a big hit, as they all mostly required similar mental focus as work. So these days I generally do a lot less mentally taxing things. Sure I'll have bursts of creativity, but most days my brain is spent when I'm done at work and I'll go for a bike ride or watch a movie.

Yea I don't think the response above you actually understood my comment. I do play chess somewhat seriously and it's similar mental labor as programming. And I can only do so much more serious mental work after a day at work coding. And I definitely could not commit to two hours of serious chess study every day. Maybe 30-60 minutes of games & puzzles.

Playing a sport is completely different from playing chess, the physicality of a sport is at least different type of challenge.

My experience with such outlets is that I then put less effort into work and people around. And my observation of people who have super intellectually involved hobbies is that they do too. I can use prime mental effort for work and thinking about world around me. Or into difficult hobby (chess, electronics was for me a little). But if I do spend time with difficult hobby I am tired for work which requires focus. If I fully focus on work so I do my maximum, then I am too tired for chess. If I was not, I could be coding faster.

So for me, intellectual hobbies correlate with when project in work are boring or unmotivating (there are such periods).

I would not be able, or rather willing, to spend two hours per day playing chess at this point. However, it is all about priorities. If playing chess and improving is valuable to you, everyone can make the time.

Would you be willing to spend 2 hrs per day on any type of game?

Another person, but no.

If you have the time, and it's fun, why not?

Many ordinary people spend more time every day watching TV.

I do tv watching equivalent at times when I tired for focused activities or when I also do something else on the side.

It is just not the same. You play chess at your mental prime-time basically, to challenge and tire the brain. You watch tv/youtube to get rest.

I usually use sleep to rest.

Time alone is not enough to reach the top 5% or better in a game. You need to be focused and put a lot of effort into improving.

It's quite draining, and nothing like watching TV.

Oh, true. I was just reacting to the 2h-a-day.

And since it is a game, someone can also just have fun playing it, too, and meet people along the way too as an added bonus.

If you have heard of K. Anders Ericsson or deliberate practice you’ll know this has limits. The fastest way to get great at anything when you’re already good is not play. It’s deliberate practice. You work at the edge of your ability, doing something you are just barely capable of doing, trying to get to competent. Once you’re competent you move on to the next frustrating thing that you can’t quite do reliably. It’s closer to mentally exhausting than fun.

That's the fastest way to grow, but to retain that growth it's also worthwhile to have some 'fun' with each new skill shortly after becoming competent at it and periodically (say, monthly at a minimum) thereafter. At least, that's how it is in my experience with shred guitar techniques. The higher level stuff gets rusty faster than the fundamentals

I recently became a tenure-track prof, new father with a partner that works full time and I can get about 1-2 hours of chess in a day.

Can you please tell us more about your day to day life and why 2 hours of free-time is considered a luxury?

If you have a full-time job, family, friends, exercise, and have a hobby or two already - I'm not sure where you come up with two hours of free time per day after that.

Are you literally scheduling everything you do? Are you sleeping less than 6 hours? Obviously, there's probably 2 hours per day in small intervals where I'm not maximizing my day.

Because of this, I recently picked up guitar, and this is nice for the random periods I'm free, because I feel like picking it up 4 or 5 times a day for 5-10 minutes still allows me to make a lot of progress, be creative, and learn a lot about (and appreciate) music.

Chess is also something you could do this with, but I feel like at that time scale it would be harder and less rewarding, and this is still about 1/4th of the two hours mentioned.

Edit:

I probably spend 30 minutes on HN per day, which is mostly a waste. But this is also in small intervals.

OP here. Yeah, the best advice I know for making anything a daily habit is to make it an emergency. It comes first. So, you get some negotiable time, the first thing you do is (chess) and then you figure out the other things later.

The downside is of course that sometimes the other important things are hard to maintain. But this is how you do it.

Of course you can’t just tack on another hobby that’s 2 hrs/day when you’ve already got others. There are sacrifices with everything. If you want to take up chess as a hobby you’ll need to make room by doing less of another hobby or something else.

Similarly I've wanted to allocate some amount of time to a creative outlet, which I've neglected for some time. Huge time sink to get something out of it, I feel. I also enjoy variety when it comes to games. That can be chess at times, but not in a dedicated, obsessive sense, just a means to flex my mind a bit with puzzles.

Admittedly, level of challenge in games can vary tremendously. I always like to have one on rotation that is difficult.

> However, to be able to spend 2 hours a day on this seems like an indescribable luxury to me.

Is this how far we've regressed? I'm sure most humans through history have had more free time than you.

While agreeing with your general principle, I think you're being unfair.

Two hours a day, every day, is a lot of time. I barely watch television and still, if you asked me to find two more hours every day I'd tell you that you were crazy.

I already have hobbies. I relax. I spend time with my partner. I sleep, I cook, I work, I walk.

I do not find myself with two hours that I don't know what to do with, and I'd challenge you to find someone that does.

Wait, do you think the OP has somehow discovered a 26 hour day? Everyone gets 24 hours. Take off about 8 hours for sleeping. That's what you have to play with. How you choose to divide that up is up to you but it's always used in full, no matter how you choose to use it. In this day and age the amount of time you need to dedicate to just surviving is close to zero. It's your choice to work more and not have enough time to play chess.

Every hour ends up going to something. To make space for something new, something else always has to go.

Reminds me of Nietzche: "Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.”.

You can add 'a parent' to your list.

That is exactly why I would consider 2 hours daily to spend on mastering a game a luxury.

Before kids? Sure. After the kids are old enough to basically be on cruise control? Likely. But now? Not even close.

To be fair, pre-lockdown I use to have an hour long commute and that would allow me to study Japanese close to two hours a day and still let me a lot of time to look after my baby once home.

I have 4 boys, 2 of which under under 5 months; I dearly miss my 1 hour drive to and from work, with podcasts, tech talks and thinking space.

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