By Leo Babauta

I’ve been learning to play chess lately, and studying hard. It’s been teaching me a lot about how to learn a new skill, because it’s not enough to read or watch videos about chess — you have to turn your knowledge into skill.

In this article, I’m going to share some of what I’ve been learning about learning skills, and turning knowledge into skill.

This should apply to a lot of skill learning: languages, martial arts, sports, video games, woodworking, housebuilding, learning physics or mathematics, studying medicine or law, and more.

  1. Consistency is king. Often people want to learn really quickly — learn a language in 2 months, etc. So they try to learn everything at once. But this isn’t how learning happens — you can do it in a burst, but much more important is how you are learning long term. So it’s most important that you do some almost every day. You don’t have to be perfect. But try for long-term consistency. This will uplevel your results dramatically over time. For my chess study, I’ve been doing 1–2 hours a day, broken into 20–30 minute segments, and I’ve seen really great progress.

  2. Immerse yourself to learn the patterns. My big insight when I started learning chess is that good players have been immersed in the “language” of chess for decades. They’re native speakers of the language, while I’m struggling to understand the most basic patterns. So I decided to immerse myself as much as possible in the basic patterns of the game, repeatedly and daily, and it has helped a lot. I’m still at a very basic level, but my fluency is increasing a lot.

  3. Analyze mistakes to find your thinking errors. When we start out, we have bad habits that need to be unlearned. And we have thinking mistakes that we don’t realize are even mistakes. So the best way to improve dramatically is to analyze your mistakes to understand where you’re thinking about it in the wrong way. You might not be able to do that on your own, so it’s best to study with a more experienced student, a coach, a teacher, or have some materials that can help you spot your mistakes.

  4. Focus on the process, not the outcome. In chess, there are different levels that people are trying to reach, just like in martial arts and video games. But while it’s nice to shoot for a goal like that, we don’t control our rate of progress. Focusing on a rating or achieving a certain level will lead to frustration and discouragement. Instead, focus on what you can control: get stronger by doing drills, studying, practicing, playing, etc. If you do those kind of things, you’ll improve at the rate you’re able to improve.

  5. Don’t do everything — do a few key things. When there’s so much to learn, we tend to want to do everything at once. In my chess study, that means I want to learn every topic at the same time, and I buy a thousand books I can’t possibly read in a year. Instead, I’ve been learning to focus myself: there are exactly two things that I’m trying to improve (tactical pattern recognition, and the skill of calculation). I do a few things to work on those, but not many.

  6. Turn knowledge into skill with tiered practice. Reading about something doesn’t mean you can do it. Watching a YouTube video about how to shoot a 3-point shot in basketball doesn’t mean you’re good at it. We have to turn it into skill through repeated practice. So that’s what I’ve been doing — if I know I shouldn’t be putting my pieces in squares they can just be captured, how will I develop that skill? The answer for me comes in tiered practice: I practice slowly without pressure (using puzzles), then faster with a little pressure (against the computer), then a bit faster with more pressure (against opponents in blitz games). Each step, I’m trying to practice as best as I possibly can, and when that gets easier, I go up to the next tier of practice.

  7. Don’t forget to have fun. Study can be hard and rewarding, but too much hard study will burn you out and the joy will fade. Instead, make sure you’re loving it! If you don’t, you won’t stick with it for very long. For me, the love has only been growing.

OK, that’s what I’ve got for now, I’m still learning so I’ll have more to share as I deepen into my study. I hope you’ve found this helpful, and here’s to your joyful learning endeavors!