Brian Johnson's son Emerson tied for 2nd at the Texas State Chess Championships after moving up to the elementary division. Johnson credits Emerson's rapid rating gains to a specific target: becoming a US Chess Candidate Master by age 12, plus consistent effort and support.
Questions this episode answers
Tied for 2nd in the elementary championship division; record: 3 wins, 0 losses, 3 draws (3-0-3).
Emerson: 635; the girl: 778 (pre-tournament).
The girl: 944; Emerson: 943 (post-tournament).
Emerson rose from a post-tournament 943 to a peak of 1632.
She declined from a post-tournament 944 down to 699.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. I'm typing this a few days after Emerson finished playing in the Texas State Chess Championships. It was his second year playing in the state championships. The first year he played in the JV division. A few months after starting to play, it was his second official tournament. He went 70 and won the whole thing. Awesome, proud dad. This year he moved up to the elementary championship division where he played against the best fifth and sixth graders in the state. Now we homeschool him, but he'd be in the fifth grade. He started in the fifth spot and ended tied for second, going 303 with three wins, zero losses and three draws. He and the awesome kid who won were the only ones to go undefeated. Now, the weekend was awesome. Emerson is incredible. I'm proud of him and I'm excited for him and his chess and life future and all that. But I'm fascinated by a number of things, and I'm still wrapping my philosophical brain around the art and science of motivation and ambition and achievement as it relates to life in general and to his chess performance over the last 18 months and the next 51 months, etcetera, in particular. For example, I went back and looked at last year's state championship. It was exactly a year ago. Again, he finished in first place, and I looked up the girl who finished in second place. She was great. I remember him barely beating her, and she beat everyone else she played but him. Now, she started at a much higher rating than him. Before the tournament, she started with a US chess rating of 778, while he started with a US chess rating of 635. After the tournament, she had a rating that was a point higher than him, 944 versus his at 943. Now, I was curious to see how each of them did year to year, and it blew me away to see the difference. Whereas Emerson went from a post tournament rating of 943 up to a peak of 1632, which, to be clear, is crazy. She went from a post tournament rating of 944 down to 699. Now, of course, there are a lot of potential reasons for this, all of which are, of course, valid and important. Maybe she just wasn't that into chess in the first place. Maybe she got really excited about something else. Or maybe an infinite number of other factors played a role. Again, there are a lot of potential reasons for this, all of which are, of course, valid and important. And I find myself scratching my head and thinking about this and how we may be able to apply some wisdom from it to our lives. Now, knowing we're all busy and you don't have time for me to ponder these issues with you in this one forever, let's see if we can boil this contemplation down into a practical bit of wisdom. Here's the deal. I currently think that the number one thing that differentiated Emerson from our fellow chess kid is simple. As we discussed in the very first plus one we created, when Emerson first got into chess check out to become a master, he knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted to be a US chess candidate master by the time he was 12. Now, a US chess candidate master has a US chess rating of 2000. Again, he's now at 1632 or whatever at the peak. Now that's an ambitious, heroic target set. With the support of me and his mom and his coach, he got to work. His talents times effort produced skill. His skill times more effort produced achievement. And he still has a lot more work to do. But again, I find this whole thing philosophically fascinating. All of which brings us to you and your kids. Today's +1. What do you really, really, really want? I'm serious. What do you really, really, really want in your life? Take the time to slow down for a moment and get really clear on the heroic target that most inspires you. Then let's set that heroic target, whoop it, and get to work. It's day one. We're all in. Let's go, little P.S. i've never done this before, but I'm actually going to play the plus one from February 6, 2023. So you can see how we were thinking about things in the very beginning of our chess journey. Check it out. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. Today, Emerson and I played chess as I ate breakfast. Here's him in the morning. Daddy, will you play chess with me while I eat breakfast? Me? Yes. As I remembered my heroic commitments that I made that morning to respond to a bid from Emerson and play with the kids and create a micro moment of awesome with Emerson. Target swipe. Target swipe. Target swipe. And he destroyed me. And I've never been happier to lose at anything in my life. I'm incredibly proud of how hard he has worked and played to get better and better, such that he can now easily beat me. Parent tip. Chesskid.com is amazing. All right. So today, Emerson told me he would like to be a chess master. To which I said, awesome. I'd like to support you with that and all your other goals in life. Then I said, what specific level of mastery would you like to achieve and by when would you like to do so? It's important to get clarity on your goals. In fact, that's rule number one of effective goal setting. Once we know the time target, we can plan accordingly. Know this specificity is the number one thing Heidi Grant Halvorson says successful people do differently in the most popular blog post in The Harvard Business Review's history called 9 Things Successful People Do Differently. Check out a link to that and check out our notes on her great book Succeed as well. So Emerson and I looked up the different titles the International Chess Federation bestows upon different tiers of mastery. Emerson decided that he would like to be what's known as a national expert or candidate Master. By the time he's 12, he's now 10. Perfect. Now we have our wish. Then I asked him why he wanted to achieve that, to which he said, it would be fun and I'd be able to beat almost anyone. It's true, he says. I believe him. Perfect. Now we have our wish and our outcome or the benefit we'll experience when when the wish comes to fruition. It's the first part of whooping and turning our dreams into reality. I dare say Gabriel Oettingen would approve. See our notes on rethinking positive thinking. Now we'll need to run that wish and outcome up against reality and see what obstacles will arise and what plans will need to be put in place to see what price he will need to pay and whether or not he wants to pay that price and if his goal is doable, etc. We'll consult with a chess coach to walk through that process. It's above my pay grade, but that isn't quite the point of today's plus one. This is. As we looked at the range of rankings, we saw that the lowest ranking is called National Class J, which includes people who only have a 100 to 199 ranking. Emerson saw that and said something along the lines of that's not a very good ranking. Although that is of course true on one level. I told him, buddy, that ranking is actually the most important ranking. Then I said, you know why? And he said, I don't know. And I said, because if you don't have the humility to be that bad, you'll never get that good. And that's today's plan. Plus one. You want to be a master? Be willing to be a beginner. Day one. All in. Let's go hero.
