Intrusive Thoughts
My most common problem when trying to concentrate on chess – or anything else – is that my mind starts wandering and all sorts of things go through my mind, for example “What’s the weather going to be like?” or “Should I go for a run later today?”.
When dealing with this, it is important to stay calm and don’t beat yourself up because these thoughts keep popping up in your head. To regain my concentration I found meditation to be very beneficial. After a couple of months of (almost) daily meditation, I got better at getting distracting thoughts out of my head. Whenever I now feel my mind wandering, I close my eyes, take a couple of deep breaths and clear my mind.
Obviously, you can’t put more serious thoughts simply aside and stop worrying about them. In such cases I found it very helpful to have a fixed time when you can think and worry about these things. Then you can say to yourself “I will think about them at this time” when you are trying to concentrate and get them off your mind.
Concentrating during Studying
The first thing you should do is removing all distractions from your study area. An organised working environment helps you to stay focuesd on your chess study and often prevents your mind from wandering. This is also the reason why I prefer to do serious study with a physical book and a real board, since I get too easily distracted when I’m doing work on the computer or a tablet.
I also find that taking frequent small breaks helps my concentration a lot. I usually study for 25 minutes and then take a 5 minute break and after 4 study blocks I take a 15 minute brake. You can adjust these times or simply take a short break whenever you feel that you can’t concentrate anymore. In the breaks, I usually walk around a bit and clear my mind to stay fresh.
Concentrating during a Game
I think that a pre-game routine is very helpful to get your mind into the game. Before starting with my pre-game routine, I had some games where I couldn’t think in the opening and was playing too many moves without thinking, which lead to many mistakes.
When you notice that your mind keeps wandering during the game, you should start by trying to clear your mind and then ask yourself questions about the position to get your attention back to the game. Typical questions are “What is my worst placed piece?”, “What is my opponent planning?” or “Are there any hidden resources in the position which I hadn’t seen before?”.