Brian Johnson's son Emerson improved his chess rating 300 points in 30 days by doing one hour of tactical puzzles daily on chesstempo.com. His rating jumped from 1635 to 1930, placing him in the top 99.6%. Johnson argues that focused daily practice beats outcome goals.
Questions this video answers
One hour of tactical puzzles on chesstempo.com each day.
30 days in a row.
22 wins in a row with a single draw.
Nearly 300 points, from 1635 to 1930.
Approximately the top 99.6 percentile.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. Not too long ago, we chatted about Emerson's loss to a brilliant 9 year old kid in one of his tournament chess matches. We talked about the fact that that loss, for whatever reason, catalyzed a level of clarity in Emerson's mind that if he wanted to go to the next level in chess performance, he'd have to change the way he was training. It also catalyzed an even more aggressive timeline on which he wanted to hit his goal to become a chess master. So, long story slightly shorter. Emerson and his coach decided that if he wanted to go to the next level and more specifically hit the 2000 US Chess Federation rating required to become a candidate master, he needed to do one thing. Literally one thing. If he wanted to go to the next level, he'd need to do one hour of tactical puzzles on a website called chesstempo.com. that's it. One hour of tactical puzzles on chesstempo.com but his brilliant coach, Nick, said he'd have to do that one hour every single day. Nick promised Emerson that if he did that his game would go to the next level. Now, I actually got tears in my eyes typing that because Nick was so clear and Emerson believed him so much and then became so committed to dominating it. Now I'm typing this the morning after emerson had done 30 days of those puzzles in a row. And that's pretty much all he did chess wise. He stopped watching all his favorite chess streamers. He didn't even play any games for the first two weeks of his new training, Just that hour of puzzles every single day. And you know what happened? He just went next, next, next level. In fact, he won 22 games in a row yesterday with a single draw in there. Now, to be clear, that's crazy. Nick said the most he'd ever won in a row is something like a dozen games, which is also amazing. And over the last two weeks, Emerson's Chess.com rating went up nearly 300 points from 1635 to 1930, placing him in the top 99.6 percentile of all chess players on Chess.com. now, to be clear, that's crazy. Now, of course I'm a proud dad, but I'm also a really fascinated philosopher and teacher and coach. I'm literally astonished that something that simple could lead to something that powerful. It's the perfect demonstration of how outcome goals are byproducts of solid process goals. And that's today's plus one. What's your wildly important goal in your life right now. It could be going next level in your energy, your work, or your love. What is it? Get clear on that. Then get even more clear on what you think is the number one thing you could do to have the best shot at hitting that wildly important target. You got it? Great. Now go focus on the process for the next 30 days and let the outcomes take care of themselves. It's day one. We're all in. Let's go.
