How Do I Use a Lead in Development?

Sometimes, I feel like I am crushing the guy because he has absolutely no pieces developed and I'm already castled and got both knights out and a bishop or two. How do I take advantage of this?

Use your developed pieces to attack one weak spot in his structure. His undeveloped pieces are immobile, so he shouldn't be able to defend his weak point.

@RJblue try to move your pieces at good squares which will make problems for your opponent and try to attack on his weak point in the game

If you want examples, look into one of Naroditsky's educational series on Youtube or Twitch. He explains his thought process in detail and tends to emphasize piece activity a lot.

push pawns. own the board.

He should most likely hit him quick before he has time to organize. And as always, specific examples are greatly preferable to generalized maunderings.

Speaking very generally what you want to do when you have a lead in development is prevent the opponent from castling, blow open the center, and attack the enemy king.

Study Morphy's games.

@RJblue I'm no expert, but a trick that helps me with it is click on the 'flip the board' option when playing and have a look from their perspective. And then think what move would make me cramped here or what move would attack my weaknesses. Sometimes it's easier to see the crushing positional move from an alternative angle. Give that a try.

One of the more useful bits of advice that I've heard for this sort of situation - because it's kind-of counterintuitive - is that if you've got a lead in development then as well as looking to start spamming threats as quickly as possible, it's also useful to look for ways to chuck a spanner in the opponent's attempts to fix their position, generally by trying to shut down obvious freeing moves that would let them catch up with development and get castled.

Instinctively you want to to go all out and attack as quickly as possible but sometimes it's more effective to play a slightly longer game by keeping the opponent bottled up for longer.