17 Dec 2025 · 4 min
Brian Johnson watches his son Emerson practice chess visualization with coach Nick, noticing the deep focus required. He connects this to intellectual persistence, a virtue Aristotle valued, then asks you to spend five minutes on your hardest creative challenge.
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic one. A couple ones ago we chatted about my interaction with Emerson in which I asked him what he thought I was thinking about. When I plugged in his Oura Ring Charger, I mentioned the fact that he spent a long time earnestly contemplating the question. Frankly, it was almost a little uncomfortable for me to patiently sit there waiting for his response. And I had to discipline myself to not to interrupt his contemplation. As I waited for his response. I admired his incredible capacity to stick with a challenge until he got the answer he was looking for. Now, to put it in perspective. As you know, if you've been following along and as we discuss in the opening chapters to Arete and I link to the opening series of chapters in this +1, you can check them out. Emerson is really into chess. His current ambition is to become a chess Grandmaster. He has a fantastic coach. We were blessed to find on chesskid.com Love you Nick. And just the other day I was making a lunch while Emerson and Nick were doing a zoom coaching session. Now Nick is helping Emerson cultivate his ability to calculate X moves ahead by cultivating his ability to visualize the chessboard without seeing the actual pieces on the board. Now, Nick does that by sharing the chess notation from the location of the pieces, then asking him to solve a puzzle or make the next best series of moves. As you may know, chess pieces and moves can be represented by noting what rank and file a certain piece is in. I'll spare you the details, but Nick shares the chess notations for where the pieces are on the board. Then Emerson has to visualize those pieces on the board in their respective places. Then he has to solve the puzzle and Nick has presented. I got tears in my eyes typing that and goosebumps saying it. Proud dad moment that he can do that. So I'm making my lunch. Nick and Emerson are working on one of those visualization puzzles. Now, I'm not really paying attention to the details, but Nick says something to Emerson then everything is quiet. Now look over. Emerson's face is scrunched up and he's looking up and around and clearly trying to set the pieces up on this virtual visualized chessboard in his head so we can solve the puzzle. I go back to making my lunch. A solid minute goes by. Pure silence. Now I'm captivated by the power of his contemplation. I stop moving and almost stop breathing to create silence for him while I soak in his remarkable focus and fierce commitment to solving the challenge. Another minute goes by, and another. And he finally starts describing the series of moves he thinks he needs to make to solve the puzzle. And I'm awestrucking. And I'm inspired to make sure I stick with my challenges for at least as long. And that's what my dear friend Tom Morris, in his great new book, Stoicism for Dummies, tells us that Aristotle called intellectual persistence. And that's today's plus one. How's your intellectual persistence? If you feel so inspired, let's move from theory to practice to mastery and flex your intellectual persistence muscles right now. Step one. What's your number one? Creative or life challenge? You got it. Now, Step two, turn off all distractions, external and internal, and go spend five minutes trying to solve it. Day one. All in. Let's go, hero.
