The Trap of Consumpton: I Own Too Much Stuff

I own a lot of chess stuff.  I could just list it, but a picture is worth a thousand words:

Unfortunately, that's not all of it.  I likely have more books strewn around, and I've given away a good chunk.  Don't forget my hardrive, packed full of digital content, not to mention digital books on Kindle and Forward Chess, random products from random sites, and then my most recent money pit, Chessable.

I recently went through my library and counted the stuff I wanted to study but haven't gotten around to yet.  I hit 81.  That's 81 books, courses or products that I bought, eager to dive in ... and then never did more than an hour, and certainly never after the first week.  And this is only the stuff I want to study; there's a large pile, probably equal in size, which I've accepted are a lost cause. 

Today will be a quick post.  In my chess education materials, I focus on how find the best move, on the right way of thinking.  Well, I will share how I made the wrong moves when it came to buying stuff.  Learn from my mistakes so that you, too, don't end up with a backlog you have little hope of clearing.

Small-Town Scarcity

I grew up in a small town before the rise of online shipping.  My sources of chess material were the local library and, once I had a part-time job, the local bookstore.  It had one small row for "Games", mostly filled with Bridge material if I recall correctly, and occasionally it had new chess books.  I was selective, but I bought many of these.  I mean, if I didn't, I wouldn't have anything to study.

To my credit, I did study these books.  It helped that the next batch of chess books wouldn't arrive for several months, so I didn't get distracted.  The random nature of my chess acquisitions made for haphazard studying, though.  I remember getting half-way through IM Dembo's book "Playing the Grunfeld" before realizing I had no idea what was happening or what to do once the line ended.  Indeed, I played a correspondence game, followed the analysis exactly ... and lost about four moves later.

I basically stopped studying opening theory after that, though I kept buying books when they showed up.

My error here was understandable: I wanted to study chess and had scarce resources to do so.  Further, my first book, Tarrasch's "The Game of Chess", absolutely revolutionized my early play.  Maybe the next book will give me a similar jolt?  If something came along, I had to give it a shot.

Fortunately, we don't live in that world anymore.  If you are reading this, you are on the Internet, and you can order just about any product and get started immediately.  Scarcity is not a concern ... no, we have the opposite problem.

Buying Abilities

Have you ever noticed that fitness ads and commercials always have the most insanely fit people on them?  You look at the physique, you want that, and you associate the product in question with that physique.

I really need that water bottle.

This is basically what happened to me, but instead of buying muscles, I'm buying abilities.  Two examples stand out.  I'm bad at endgames.  When I see a book on endgames, I buy it because I want to improve the ability.  Like Neo in the Matrix, I just need to touch the book and absorb the content.  Instead of Kung Fu, though, it's the Lucena Position.

This also applied with opening books.  I distinctly remember buying a book on the Najdorf not because I wanted to play it per se, but because I wanted to be a Najdorf player.  That is, only the most fearless people dared to play the Najdorf.  It made a statement about who you were.  I wanted to make that statement.

Needless to state, this didn't work.  You don't buy abilities, you earn them through sacrifice and study.  After the emotional high wore off, I basically never touched the books again.  Too much work.

Unfortunately, this still plagues me today.  I buy Chessable courses because I want to gain a certain ability (defence, endgames, calculation, etc) or to become a certain player (the great attacker ... thanks to this Attacking Opening!). I buy it, read the the intro, do a few exercises ... and then it gets added to the backlog.

Fundamentally, the problem is that I didn't have a plan.  I should have goals and be looking to improve my weaknesses.  If I set a goal to improve my endgames, I can then go look for resources, compare them, select the most appropriate and get going.  When I don't do this, the marketers do it for me, and I go drifting randomly from book to book, product to product.

Most Things are Most Things: Average

On the bright side, I have substantially completed a good chunk of chess content.  If I were to analyze this critically, I would say three of them have absolutely revolutionzed my game:

1. Tarrasch's "The Game of Chess"
2. IM Josh Waitzkin's Chessmaster lessons
3. GM Smirnov's "Grandmaster Positional Understanding"

Going down a step, there's a dozen or so products that were very good.  The rest, the vast majority, sit in the middle.  There were okay.  They provided some knowledge or some entertainment, but they didn't move the needle.  They were merely average.  By definition, most things are average... and that means most things I buy are merely okay and won't seriously help me improve.

I don't think this, though.  Whenever I look at something shiny and new, I have hope that it will be the next thing to revolutionize my game.  Each book is a lottery ticket.  I hope for that big pay-off, but it's probably just a "try again".

Realizing this has helped me seriously slow the tide, and now that I know just how many things I've bought without committing, it's now just a trickle.  The temptation to buy new courses on top of my huge backlog is minimum.  This is how I'm escaping the trap of consumerism.

Conclusion

Please don't interpret this as saying, "Don't buy anything ever."  I've gotten a large amount of joy from studying chess.  Rather, I urge you to learn from my mistakes.  Buy things for the right reason. Don't let marketing drive your decisions. It's not a scarce resource, and it won't suddenly give you powers or abilities.  Make a plan, determine what you want, do some research ... and then enjoy!  Chess is fun.

Now if you excuse me, I have 81 courses I need to start working my way through.