How to Create a Study Plan

In How to Study Chess on Your Own, Davorin Kuljasevic describes a study plan he created when he was in the first year of high school. The plan spanned 6 months and involved studying chess 4-5 hours a day (6-7 on weekends) while overhauling virtually every part of his game: openings, middlegame, and endgame; strategy and tactics.

I cannot relate to this. I learned about planning from Sesame Street, which may not sound strange, until I tell you that this was about a month ago. There’s a Spotify kid’s playlist I put on sometimes when I’m watching my son, and one of the tracks is a scene from Sesame Street. In it, a king is having a picnic, but no one brings potato salad, which he loudly complains about. The next time he has a picnic, everyone brings potato salad, to the exclusion of all other foods. One of his advisors suggests he make a plan wherein one person is assigned to bring potato salad, one person brings hot dogs, etc. When I heard this I thought – this is a 100% true story – “Holy shit, I should make a plan!”

So I am not the most advanced planner in the world, but I would suggest this actually makes me more qualified to teach you how to plan. The best planners tend to be people with really high executive function. They’ve been making plans since they were kids, they love making plans, and their plans are often very detailed and complicated. These are the people who usually write books on planning. They are also the people who are least in need of plans. We need a planning guide for the scatterbrains and the screwups, like me.

The 1⁄3, 1⁄3, 1⁄3 Strategy

For combining simplicity and effectiveness, the best advice on how to divide your study plan comes from GM Noel Studer. He suggests dividing your study time into three equal parts:

1. Playing (including reviewing your games)
2. Solving exercises
3. Everything else

The simplicity of this strategy encodes a lot of chess wisdom.

• Keep it manageable: There’s a lot of chess information out there these days. Books, videos, courses, etc. By dumping all of it into the last bucket, this plan makes clear that you don’t need to worry about most of it.
• Skill vs. knowledge: Both are important for improvement, but many adult players emphasize knowledge and neglect skill. The first two pillars of the plan are all about improving your skill through practice.
• Continuous vs. periodic: There are some kinds of chess study you can do as a one-off, and other kinds you have to do continuously if you want to keep improving. Playing and solving fit into the continuous category. The third pillar is for one-off things like learning an opening or theoretical endgame, where once you learn it, you don’t have to keep working on it apart from occasional maintenance.

Turning it into a plan

What I realized when working on my own study plan is that the 1⁄3 strategy flows very nicely into a weekly study plan. If you devote one day to each pillar, you have a 3-day cycle that you can do twice, then take a day off, and that makes a perfect study week.

• Playing: The gold standard, of course, is OTB chess. In my opinion, this is the single most impactful thing you can do to improve your chess. But it’s not always possible to play OTB. Playing online chess can still be very valuable, whether it’s classical, rapid, or blitz. As long as you are focused when you’re playing and review the games, you can get a lot out of it.
• Solving: Between easy and hard puzzles, I tend to prefer hard. These stretch your ability, and you in effect get many easy puzzles as shorter sequences within hard puzzles. In a perfect world I’d suggest working from a book on a physical board. But the best puzzles are the ones you’ll actually do, so if the convenience of online puzzles helps you keep up with a plan, that’s also okay. The important thing is to keep doing them.
• Everything else: Here’s where you have some more choice. I would suggest working on one thing at a time to keep things manageable. There are two strategies for deciding what to work on next...

How to choose what to work on

1. Work on your biggest weakness. This is the Soviet school of chess approach. It does have some logic to it: if you stop doing the things that cause you to lose, you ought to win more. At the same time, I’ve never heard a completely convincing explanation of why working on your weaknesses would always be better than working on your strengths. Having no big weaknesses will help you win more games, but so will having big strengths.
2. Work on what you enjoy or what excites you the most. Enjoying your work with chess is important both for continuous improvement and overall happiness. If your study routine is a joyless grind, it’s very unlikely you’ll stick with it for long. On the other hand, if you like what you’re doing, you’re more likely to be engaged, curious, and learn more quickly. This is another area where the 1⁄3 plan shines: since you’ve already addressed the most important elements in the first two pillars, you have some room to do what you like guilt-free in the third pillar.

Wrapping Up

I hope this helps you build a study plan that works for you. And I’d love to hear about your experience with plans. Do you have a set study plan, or just make it up as you go? What planning strategies have worked for you, and which haven’t?

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