Act Naturally.

They are going to take me to the movies and all you have to do is act naturally! On Friday, November 1, I was doing a hike to the Griffith Observatory before the Los Angeles Open began. As I approached the Hollywood sign I couldn’t help but start singing the Ringo Starr song “Act Naturally”. This made me start thinking about the importance of going with one’s instincts and not overthinking it. The portion Lech Lecha says “Go from your land, from your birthplace and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you.” There, G‑d says, he will be made “ While it is important to calculate for every move you make on and off the board, one should strongly consider his instincts.

One exercise I have done with students several times is showing them certain positions. Once I would show a position, I would ask the student what move he would play on the spot. While he would hesitate to give an immediate answer, I would ask him to pretend he had only 1 second left on the clock. Often the answer he would give would not be any different than the move he suggested after thinking for a few minutes.

The day after the Los Angeles Open, I went outside my comfort zone, paddle boarding in the Pacific Ocean by the Santa Monica Pier. While I have paddled several times before in Boston, Seattle and elsewhere, it was the first time doing it on the Ocean in the waves. I had difficult standing up on the board, not because I could not do it, but only because I kept overthinking the process and kept telling myself I had to remain kneeling on the board. Sometimes you need to abide by Nike’s suggestion and just do it.

In that vain, we should get inspired by the famous words of Hands on Hoops Skills CEO Michael Deutsch: “Say yes and figure it out later.” While one most certainly need to do some preparation before agreeing to do something, one needs to be confident and move forward without too much thought. I constantly remind students that I rather them be confident about incorrect answers and then I confident about an incorrect answer. One expert student constantly finds himself in time pressure. While he often does get good positions out of the opening and middle game, he almost always has to blitz out his remaining moves, not giving him much of a chance. When I’ll ask him why he spends so much time in relatively common basic opening positions, he will say that there were all these complications. However, he generally just wastes time just second guessing himself.

To the contrary of Benjamin Franklin’s famous quote “Failing to Plan and planning to fail”, one should not go overboard with precautionary measures. I know too many entrepreneurs that spend way too much time preparing their corporate collateral, fancy logos, documentation, team, etc. Many businesses will take 1-2+ years to get off the ground before they generate revenue. To the contrary, I did not incorporate Premier Chess until we had a check we could not deposit because it was written out the company name. Then through a ton of emails, calls and networking, after 2 months in business in September 2017, we were in 14 schools and had 10 instructors on our team. Now we have 43 instructors on our team and run programs in 69 schools and several companies, including the law firm Kramer Levin. While its most certainly important to maintain a high level of product/service, for a business to grow, it’s also important to remain confident and not waste too much time doing non-revenue generating activities.

While it is important to conduct blunder checks to make sure your instincts are sane, you shouldn’t necessarily over think every thing you do, whether that be in life, business or on the chess board. While an attorney knows the law in and out, at the end of the day when he is on trial, he needs to make quick decision! In the words of Guitar Guide Guru CEO Mike Papapavlou, “Pame” (let’s go)!