life got really wild about a month and a half ago. with four kids in three different schools and numerous activities going on; with a ramp-up in work - every new day and week brought more and more work and things to do.
then our home was burglarized; part of it was ransacked. ever since, we've been trying to recover and get back to a somewhat normal life.
chess took a backseat, obviously. i've not done any work at chesstempo or started any new games at chess.com since the middle of september.
while we were reassembling our home, i took the opportunity to do some reevaluation of what i'm focused on in life. a part of that was figuring out what i should do with chess. i love solving chess problems, but i'm beginning to wonder if that really is helping improve my game. on top of that, i don't regularly play. i had a number of correspondence games going, but not much beyond those. although i have been playing more with my younger son - who has taken a big interest in chess when i introduced him to Fritz and Chesster a couple of weeks ago.
i don't quite know what my new routine will look like, but i know i need to play lots more games; i know i like solving problems at chesstempo; and i'm trying to experiment with AOX's suggestion at Chess GYM (attackers). i'm up to around 17 pieces a minute now.
the one constraint i have is time. i estimate i have about 10 hours a week to dedicate to training and playing.
so, with all that said, a high level view of my plan looks like this:
- during the week, do 30 minutes of tactics at CT; play a 15 0 game at chess.com (during lunch)
- spend an hour an evening going over correspondence games at night
- play a 30 0, or 60 0 game Sunday night
- somewhere in there, i need to spend some time reading books (i'd like to actually use the books i have, which are just collecting dust)
any suggestions from my dear readers? what should i focus on? how do i maximize my results for improving, given my time constraint?
