Happy Distraction = Good Ideas, Part 2

see link below about this book

I read an article yesterday in Chess Life; it's called Still Going Strong: Yuri Averbakh.

What caught my attention were a couple of paragraphs in the middle of the article.

"As a professional, Averbakh tried methodically to improve his game by exercising his subconscious mind, and intuition.  'It is very important to raise consciousness when you are working in chess,' he explains."

He then talks about how a relative of his wife told him to "examine Stanislavski's oeuvre" - whatever that means (more info at wikipedia?).  He doesn't expound on what the system does, but in the next paragraph, it seems to allude to the 'happy distraction' idea.

He says, "For instance I was working on some ideas in endings ... I had one problem to solve and I couldn't find the solution.  And when I was not working on this ... I was away somewhere, not over the chessboard, but immediately I found the solution, because my mind was working."

The article continues, "The gap between a strong grandmaster and a world championship candidate is partly a difference in the ability to attain peak performance during the game.  Averbakh thinks this is about more than just study of positions, but it lies in the subconscious churning away while the player is, for instance, walking in a park or sitting in the theater watching a performance."

There is much more in the article and it is a really good read, but those few points really stood out while I was reading it.

The previous article to this one was about a new book out that is about Yuri (link here).