How To Make Life Decisions Like A Top Chess Player

One of the most critical skills a chess player can have is the ability to think ahead.

People who don’t know any better will often make decisions without considering the consequences. They act before they think, which leads to mistakes further down the line.

A good chess player thinks five moves ahead.

Those who think before they act are said to have second-order thinking abilities. They can foresee later consequences that may result from current actions.

Hikaru Nakamura, one of the greatest chess players of our time, is famously known for calculating dozens of moves ahead to determine his next play.

While his order of thinking is quite an exception, you should still have the same approach when dealing with decision-making.

Think about what comes next.

You should think about the results of your actions and if there are additional consequences that may follow.

Always try to picture all possible outcomes, and the effects of those outcomes, until you have enough data to find an optimal decision path.

As a computer engineer by trade, I was forced to learn about two different search algorithms: breadth-first search (BFS) and depth-first search (DFS).

https://open4tech.com/bfs-vs-dfs/

Without boring you with the technical details of each algorithm, both involve iterative searches through data, which is exactly what your brain should be doing to plan ahead. They require you to explore all possible options and routes — the only thing that changes is how you find this route.

If you want to get from point A to point F, there are a couple of different paths you can take: A — C — F and A — D — F. If you can’t see the big picture, you wouldn’t know which path is best.

But what is “best”? Does that mean it’s the shortest? Or maybe it requires the least amount of work?

These are questions you get the opportunity to answer when you think about what comes next.

Plan ahead to minimize regret.

Ever heard of the saying “hindsight is 20/20?” Well, it’s easy to see your past mistakes after they are already made. It’s much harder to see them before they happen, but it is still possible.

Have you ever gotten stuck outside in a rainstorm without your umbrella? It’s miserable — I would know.

Avoiding a situation like this requires planning ahead and using second-order thinking. You can either leave the apartment blindly or check the weather before heading out — one will result in unintended consequences and regrets, which are all avoidable.

It’s not as hard as it seems.

Second-order thinking does not require much effort — the most challenging part is realizing that you have the ability to think and plan ahead. Most people go about their daily lives without even noticing that they aren’t thinking about the future.

They live in the present and the present only.

To fully understand second-order thinking, you must live in the past, present, and most importantly, the future.

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