How to improve your chess by dedicating 10 minutes daily, 5 days a week!

Hello everyone!

We all have 24 hours, right?
When I was 15 years old, I remember studying chess 8-9 hours daily (3 individual sessions with 2-3 hours length). What a fool I was, and what waste of time that was! Only if I had knowledge about optimizing my training time...

Before I go to more detailed explanation of my improvement system, I just want to ask you a single question:

Would you be even more motivated to read this text if it said : "How to improve your chess by dedicating 6 minutes daily"?

Let's speak facts. Most of the articles, books, or videos, claim that you will need 30-60 minutes of daily training in order to improve. Let's analyze what happens in 30-minute timespan:

- Preparing board, pieces, materials for studying : 5 minutes
- Eliminating possible distractions : 5 minutes
- Deciding about (first) exercise, setting position/s : 5 minutes
- Getting into focus-zone : 15 minutes

And here we are, alarm is running (30). Did a player even manage to solve one position? I don't think so.
You say that presented schedule is pessimistic? You're wrong again - this is very optimistic schedule. Intentionally I excluded:
- Time needed to decide about materials for that day (if you don't have a coach).
- Some office/family/friend phone call at any moment of session
- Distractions by the people around you
- Negative self-talk during the training session etc.

I believe that now you see my point.
You can improve by training chess 5-10 minutes daily, I completely agree, and I am not going to argue if it is better to study 5 minutes or 5 hours daily in order to improve. I just want to say that, if you truly want to improve, you won't think about time invested into that.

For people who will reply with:
1. I don't have more time to invest daily
2. I want optimal training session

I have following answers:
1. It is okay! My point was : Don't stress about improving chess, just enjoy the game! There is a solid chance that you will improve just by playing, without a single moment of study/training, you will even improve more than reading some chess book! On the other hand, you would never improve drastically in chess, but if you really care about it, you won't ask about duration of the session on the first place - you would study chess most of your free time.
2. Optimal training session starts when you fall into the focus-zone, and you keep it as long as possible. That is usually 2-4 hours of time (which will result in total 3-5 hours long training session (depending on the player stamina)).

You have to choose your path - either enjoy the playing, and lose many games in the process, or invest many hours in the training, and again lose many games even after improving. There is no place to motivation speeches - chess has a cruel nature (one mistake in the match erases hours of grinding).

I am just tired of positive articles which don't call to action and don't present reality. I believe that this is fair, and way more useful to everyone.

Thank you for your attention! If you find this article useful, be sure to give a like! :)