The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance

numbers. Usually long study sessions went like this: I began with the critical
position from one of my games, where my intuitive understanding had not
been up to the challenge. At first my mind was like a runner on a cold winter
morning—stiff, unhappy about the coming jog, dreary. Then I began to move,
recalling my attacking ideas in the struggle and how nothing had fully
connected. I tried to pick apart my opponent’s position and discovered new
layers of his defensive resources, all the while my mind thawing, integrating
the evolving structural dynamics it had not quite understood before. Over time
my blood started flowing, sweat came, I settled into the rhythm of analysis,
soaked in countless patterns of evolving sophistication as I pored over what a
computer would consider billions of variations. Like a runner in stride, my
thinking became unhindered, free-flowing, faster and faster as I lost myself in
the position. Sometimes the study would take six hours in one sitting,
sometimes thirty hours over a week. I felt like I was living, breathing, sleeping
in that maze, and then, as if from nowhere, all the complications dissolved and
I understood.
When I looked at the critical position from my tournament game, what had
stumped me a few days or hours or weeks before now seemed perfectly
apparent. I saw the best move, felt the correct plan, understood the evaluation
of the position. I couldn’t explain this new knowledge with variations or words.
It felt more elemental, like rippling water or a light breeze. My chess intuition
had deepened. This was the study of numbers to leave numbers.
I
A fascinating offshoot of this method of analysis was that I began to see
connections between the leaps of chess understanding and my changing vision
of the world. During my study of the critical positions, I noted the feeling I had
during the actual chess game. I explained above how in the pressure of
tournaments, the tension in the mind mounts with the tension in the position,
and an error on the board usually parallels a psychological collapse of sorts.
Almost invariably, there was a consistent psychological strain to my errors in a

---

given tournament, and what I began to notice is that my problems on the
chessboard usually were manifesting themselves in my life outside of chess.
For example, while living in Slovenia it appealed to my sense of adventure
to be on the road, traveling, writing, exploring new places, but I also missed
my family. I hardly ever spoke English, communicating with everyone but my
girlfriend (who did speak English) in broken Spanish, bad Italian, and even
worse Serbo-Croatian. I was a stranger in a strange land. On the other hand, I
felt quite at home in Vrholvje. I loved the charming village life, and enjoyed
my periods of introspection. But then every month or so I would leave Slovenia
and take off, alone, for Hungary, Germany, or Holland to compete in a grueling
two-week tournament. Each trip was an adventure, but in the beginning I was
invariably homesick. I missed my girlfriend. I missed my family, I missed my
friends, I missed everything. I felt like a leaf in the wind, adrift, all alone. The
first few days were always rough but then I’d get my bearings in the new city
and have a wonderful time. I was just having trouble with transitions.
It was amazing how clearly this manifested on the chessboard. For a period
of time, almost all my chess errors came in a moment immediately following or
preceding a big change. For example, if I was playing a positional chess game,
with complex maneuvering, long-term strategical planning, and building
tension, and suddenly the struggle exploded into concrete tactics, I would
sometimes be slow to accommodate the new scenario. Or, if I was playing a
very tactical position that suddenly transformed into an abstract endgame, I
would keep on calculating instead of taking a deep breath and making long-
term plans. I was having trouble with the first major decision following the
departure from prepared opening analysis and I was not keeping pace with
sudden shifts in momentum. My whole chess psychology was about holding on
to what was, because I was fundamentally homesick. When I finally noticed
this connection, I tackled transitions in both chess and life. In chess games, I
would take some deep breaths and clear my mind when the character of the
struggle shifted. In life, I worked on embracing change instead of fighting it.
With awareness and action, in both life and chess my weakness was
transformed into a strength.
Once I recognized that deeply buried secrets in a competitor tend to surface
under intense pressure, my study of chess became a form of psychoanalysis. I
unearthed my subtlest foibles through chess, and the link between my personal
and artistic sides was undeniable. The psychological theme could range from

---

transitions to resilient concentration, fluidity of mind, control, leaps into the
unknown, sitting with tension, the downward spiral, being at peace with
discomfort, giving into fatigue, emotional turbulence, and invariably the chess
moves paralleled the life moment. Whenever I noticed a weakness, I took it on.
I also studied my opponents closely. Like myself, their psychological
nuances in life manifested over the board. I would watch a rival tapping his feet
impatiently while waiting for an elevator or carefully maneuvering around his
peas on a dinner plate. If someone was a controlling person who liked to
calculate everything out before acting, I would make the chess position chaotic,
beyond calculation, so he would have to make that uncomfortable leap into the
unknown. If an opponent was intuitive, fast, and hungering for abstract
creations, I would make the position precise, so the only solution lay in patient,
mind-numbing math.
When I was twenty-one years old and came back to America, I was more in
love with the study of chess than ever. The game had become endlessly
fascinating to me, and its implications stretched far beyond winning and losing
—I was no longer primarily refining the skill of playing chess, but was
discovering myself through chess. I saw the art as a movement closer and closer
to an unattainable truth, as if I were traveling through a tunnel that
continuously deepened and widened as I progressed. The more I knew about
the game, the more I realized how much there was to know. I emerged from
each good work session in slightly deeper awe of the mystery of chess, and with
a building sense of humility. Increasingly, I felt more tender about my work
than fierce. Art was truly becoming for art’s sake.
Of course not everything was fine and dandy. While personal growth had
been my focus in my life on the road, when I came back to America I was back
in the limelight. Fans once again mobbed me at tournaments, and I was
expected to perform—but I was in one of those vulnerable stages of growth,
like the hermit crab between shells. While my new philosophical approach to
chess was exciting spiritually, it was also a bit undermining for a young
competitor. The youthful arrogance of believing I had the answers was gone. I
was flexible and introspective but lacked that unique character and drive to my
game that had made me a champion. As a lover and learner of chess, I was
flying, but as an artist and performer I was all locked up.

---

I
. It is important to understand that by numbers to leave numbers, or form to leave form, I am describing a
process in which technical information is integrated into what feels like natural intelligence. Sometimes
there will literally be numbers. Other times there will be principles, patterns, variations, techniques,
ideas. A good literal example of this process, one that does in fact involve numbers, is a beginner’s very
first chess lesson. All chess players learn that the pieces have numerical equivalents—bishops and knights
are worth three pawns, a rook is five pawns, a queen is nine. Novices are counting in their heads or on
their fingers before they make exchanges. In time, they will stop counting. The pieces will achieve a more
flowing and integrated value system. They will move across the board like fields of force. What was once
seen mathematically is now felt intuitively.

---

CHAPTER 8
B
REAKING
S
TALLIONS
I think a life of ambition is like existing on a balance beam. As a child, there is
no fear, no sense for the danger of falling. The beam feels wide and stable, and
natural playfulness allows for creative leaps and fast learning. You can run
around doing somersaults and flips, always testing yourself with a love for
discovery and new challenges. If you happen to fall off—no problem, you just
get back on. But then, as you get older, you become more aware of the risk of
injury. You might crack your head or twist your knee. The beam is narrow and
you have to stay up there. Plunging off would be humiliating.
While a child can make the beam a playground, high-stress performers
often transform the beam into a tightrope. Any slip becomes a crisis. Suddenly
you have everything to lose, the rope is swaying above a crater of fire,
increasingly dramatic acrobatics are expected of you but the air feels thick with
projectiles aimed to dislodge your balance. What was once light and inspiring
can easily mutate into a nightmare.
A key component of high-level learning is cultivating a resilient awareness
that is the older, conscious embodiment of a child’s playful obliviousness. My
chess career ended with me teetering on a string above leaping flames, and in
time, through a different medium, I rediscovered a relationship to ambition
and art that has allowed me the freedom to create like a child under world
championship pressure. This journey, from child back to child again, is at the
very core of my understanding of success.
I believe that one of the most critical factors in the transition to becoming a
conscious high performer is the degree to which your relationship to your
pursuit stays in harmony with your unique disposition. There will inevitably
be times when we need to try new ideas, release our current knowledge to take

---

in new information—but it is critical to integrate this new information in a
manner that does not violate who we are. By taking away our natural voice, we
leave ourselves without a center of gravity to balance us as we navigate the
countless obstacles along our way. It might be interesting to examine, with a
bit more detail, how this happened to me.
* * *
Mark Dvoretsky and Yuri Razuvaev are the pillars of the Russian school of
chess. Considered by many to be the two greatest chess trainers in the world,
these two men have devoted their lives to carving talented young chess masters
into world-class competitors. They are both armed with an enormous repertoire
of original educational material for top-caliber players and you would be hard-
pressed to find a Grandmaster out there who was not seriously influenced by
one of them. Between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one, I had the
opportunity to work extensively with both of these legendary coaches and I
believe the implications of their diametrically opposed pedagogical styles are
critical for students of all endeavors. They were certainly critical for me.
When you meet Yuri Razuvaev, you feel calmed. He has the humble,
peaceful air of a Buddhist monk and a sweet, slightly ironic smile. If making a
decision, for example about where to eat, he will shrug and gently imply that
both possibilities would find him quite content. His language is similarly
abstract. His mildest comments feel like natural koans, and in conversation it
is all too easy to let gems slip through your mind like a breeze. When the
chessboard comes out, Razuvaev’s face settles into a relaxed focus, his eyes
become piercing, and a razor-sharp mind comes to bear. Analyzing with
Razuvaev, I consistently felt as though he was penetrating the deepest wrinkles
in my mind through my every chess move. After just a few hours of work with
him, I had the impression he understood me more truly than almost anybody
in my life. It was like playing chess with Yoda.
Mark Dvoretsky is a very different type of personality. I believe he is the
most important author for chess professionals in the world. His books are
extensive training programs for world-class players and are studied religiously
by strong International Masters and Grandmasters. “Reading” a Dvoretsky
book takes many months of hard work, because they are so densely packed with
ideas about some of the more esoteric elements of serious chess thinking. It’s

---

amazing how many hundreds of hours I spent laboring my way through
Dvoretsky’s chapters, my brain pushed to the limit, emerging from every study
session utterly exhausted, but infused with a slightly more nuanced
understanding of the outer reaches of chessic potential. On the page, the man is
a genius.
In life, Dvoretsky is a tall, heavyset man who wears thick glasses and rarely
showers or changes his clothes. He is socially awkward and when not talking
about or playing chess, he seems like a big fish flopping on sand. I met
Dvoretsky at the first Kasparov-Karpov World Championship match in
Moscow when I was seven years old, and we studied together sporadically
throughout my teens. He would occasionally live in my family’s home for four
or five days at a time when he visited America. During these periods, it seemed
that every concern but chess was an intrusive irrelevance. When we were not
studying, he would sit in his room, staring at chess positions on his computer.
At meals, he would mumble while dropping food on the floor, and in
conversation thick saliva collected at the corners of his mouth and often shot
out like streams of glue. If you have read Nabokov’s wonderful novel The