The Relentless Mind
Credit for this article goes to Pavel Lint, a senior developer at Chessable. The article is part of a series on Garry Kasparov, the rest of which is available at the Chessable blog.
You know what’s interesting about GM Garry Kasparov? Everything.
Many people consider Garry the best chess player ever—that is what his Chess.com biography says, although I can’t help but wonder: who are the many people? It’s not really an open election and some votes count more than others. So if GM Magnus Carlsen believes Garry to be the best, I’ll let him cast my vote.
Either way, it’s clear that Garry Kasparov can do things nobody else can. But it’s also true that he does a lot of things others can, even should do, and those have contributed to his success just as much. Those are the things I’ll focus on in this article.
The Passion
My nature is that I have to excite myself with a big challenge.
— Garry Kasparov
The first thing everyone notices when Garry enters the room is the energy. It feels like his battery is always at 200%. In life and over the chessboard, he’s curious, sharp and engaged. Although Garry himself claims that has always been the case, you can notice how he has self-taught techniques to keep the energy levels high. Exciting oneself with a big challenge is a part of it.
Too many people act like life just happens to them; you go to work, you meet your friends, sometimes life is exciting, sometimes less so. On the contrary, you could view exciting yourself as a daily routine, like brushing your teeth or getting dressed. It is easier or harder at times, but the world around us is endless, fascinating and full of miracles every moment, only limited by how much you manage to take from it.
This is where it helps to know yourself. Will a big challenge excite you like Garry? Or maybe traveling to the filming location of your favorite movie? Staying curious and excited should be carefully planned ahead.
The Bar
If you continue playing like this, you’ll be no better than Lasker!
— the sixth world champion compares the future 13th world champion to the second world champion (as an insult)
I wish there to be a day in your life when someone tells you: Hey, if you continue playing basketball like that, you’ll be no better than Michael Jordan. Or: If you invest like you do now, you’ll be no richer than Warren Buffett. Doesn’t really sound like scolding to me; but it does to Mikhail Botvinnik.
Botvinnik really set the bar to a certain level. He would criticize his students and call silver and bronze medals in international tournaments "a total failure." Naturally, students grew to internalize that. Garry has admitted on many occasions that anything but the first place felt like a loss throughout the most of his career.
Is that extreme? Maybe, but it has worked. This drive to excellence is a character trait of many champions in chess and other areas.
While you may not have Botvinnik hanging around to give you priceless advice, it is still possible to construct your environment in a way that the bar is a tiny bit further from mediocrity and a little closer to Garry.
The Ownership
It is mine to lose.
— Magnus Carlsen.
When talking about his games, Garry mostly uses I-sentences, taking full responsibility for the decisions and their consequences. It is easy to take credit when things go great, and much more challenging when it’s time to admit your incompetence and mistakes. Isn’t it tempting to blame the arbiter, the organizers, or, as of more recently, the computer mouse?
It’s common among regular people, but you won’t hear champions complain. They develop a habit of what Jocko Willink calls “Extreme Ownership”—fully focusing on their part of the equation, what they can control. At the end of the day, it’s just a rational way to preserve mental energy; but it does more than that, turning you into a better leader and a more pleasant person to be around.
The Self-Confidence
Once you start to doubt, there is no room for anything else.
— Mignon McLaughlin.
You can read thousands of books on self-love, self-confidence, and on how to become rich. But if you actually achieve those highly desired qualities, you are in trouble. If you practice self-love, people can view you as narcissistic and self-obsessed; if you are confident, you might appear arrogant; and if you get rich, you could be claimed privileged and get eaten. Good luck with all three together!
Confidence is a requirement for competition. In The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg gives examples on how training your skills falls short if you don’t believe you’re enough; further training does not yield any results until the self-perception is changed.
With Garry’s attacking style, that self-confidence is even more relevant. Luckily it came naturally to him, except for 1976-1977, when his early success was followed by a plateau and a short period of self-doubt.
Believing in yourself is not easy to learn. Fulfilling smaller plans and having support from a close friend can help, but sometimes it’s the opposite: when no one is there to help, trusting in yourself remains the last available option.
The Organized Creativity
Clear thinking at the wrong moment can stifle creativity.
— Karl Lagerfeld.
The central problem of human life is this: You have to choose. You can’t stay up until 5:00 a.m. doing creative projects and also wake up at five for a morning run. So it’s just accepted that some people are creative but messy, while others are organized but too dull.
If only the innovators were slightly more organized and the bureaucrats just a little less narrow-minded, wouldn’t we all live in the year 3000?
There just seems to be no general solution to this. However, there are ways around it.
For Kasparov, this was solved by his beloved mother. A talented manager and organizer, Klara Kasparova played a crucial role in her son’s success, allowing him to fully focus on his craft while she took care of everything else. They formed a unique complementary ecosystem, like the Earth and the Moon.
A short tribute to my mother: https://t.co/cEHk01ZeLt
— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) December 26, 2020
Thanks from me and my family for all the kind notes and acknowledgements of condolence here and elsewhere. May we all love and be loved just a little bit more in her memory.
Some of the decisions she made were difficult; some were not obvious. Even when young Garry was already showing signs of a chess prodigy, she insisted that he didn’t need to have chess classes more often than once a week (to avoid burnout and getting sick of the game). A bright contrast to what many parents do, shoving as many activities as possible to their kid’s schedule, only to result in an adult who spent 7 years in a music school and hates piano now.
Not everyone has great parents, but it’s not impossible to get an accountability buddy, a coach, or a support group like a runners’ club. It is truly difficult to be creative and organized at the same time; but the rewards for those who combine both are immense.
Conclusion
And so I believed it, too. Not only that I could do great things, but that I had a responsibility to try to achieve them.
— Garry Kasparov
In a certain way people of great talent don’t belong to themselves. That manifests itself in a sense of responsibility: to achieve greatness, to use the abilities you have to the fullest. There is another responsibility on the rest of us though: to recognize such people, to not make their lives more difficult than they need to be, and to learn from them while they expand the horizon of what we thought possible.
Thank you for reading.
