The first month of my new training plan is over and I want to reflect a bit how the month went, what can be improved and which goals got a bit out of sight.
General Thoughts
I am generally very happy with my training plan and how much time I spent on it. At first, I started out with too many different resources which lead to a feeling that I didn't have enough time to properly study every book I wanted to study. So I reduced the number of books I was working on (even though I like to have variety in my study plan) and this was very good idea. Now I sometimes still fell that one or two books don't get enough attention, but by better planning my week, I can do everything I set out to do.
This is also the first time that I track my time studying and playing serious games. I was a bit worried that it will be too much of a burden, but since I'm generally in the process of better organising my life, the time tracking felt like a nice addition. It also helps looking back at a week and seeing what got neglected. I had one week for example where I spent only 1 hour on analysing my games, even though I wanted it to be a bigger part of my study routine.
Stats
One important part of the study plan is to play more games since I feel like my knowledge-skill gap is pretty big. In October, I played the 2 OTB classical games scoring 1.5/2. Online I played
- 5 classical games (Rating: 2057 -> 2042)
- 11 rapid games (Rating: 2202 -> 2227)
- 105 Blitz games (Rating: 2114 -> 2157)
Improvements for November
I'm very happy with the structure of my training plan since I reduced the number of books I'm studying, so I'll stick with the plan until the end of the year.
However, I'm not pleased with some parts of my execution of the plan. I was especially disappointed that I only played 11 rapid games, since my goal was to play one serious game every day. But sometimes things came up which prevented me from playing and on other days I wasn't motivated enough. Therefore, my goal for November is to play 25 rapid or classical games this month.
I'll also only post updates about my training every other week, since I feel that not a lot changes during a week. I hope that the posts every two weeks will be more informative and also don't feel too repetitive.
If you have any thoughts about my plan and my progress, DM me on twitter/X. I certainly look forward to continue with the training plan and hopefully see some good results.