A few days ago I tuned into a podcast interview with ex-World Chess Champion Viswanathan Anand.

“Vishy” is widely regarded as one of the most talented chess players of all time.

One part of the podcast, about how Vishy prepared for his World Championship games, really struck me.

The Chess World Championship is the ultimate prize in chess.  Chess players prepare for the World Championships as methodically as an athlete prepares for the Olympics.  They assemble a crack commando support team, play nonstop practice matches, analyse reams of chess variations, try to crawl inside the mind of their opponent, study their opponent’s strengths & weaknesses, and use the most powerful chess computers to help them.

Nothing else matters for months, even years, beforehand.

All this is context for a quote of Vishy’s from the interview:

The problem with preparation isn’t how detailed it is.  It’s whether you can believe it.

I thought this was intriguing.

Vishy’s saying that the key to preparation isn’t the content of the preparation, but the source of that preparation. 

In this case, the team who are helping him, the chess program they’re using, the depth to which the moves have been analysed, and so on.

And if his team are crunching chess variations while hungover, using the chess computer equivalent of an abacus or playing practise matches against a washed up, world-weary Grandmaster has-been, then it doesn’t matter how detailed their preparation is.  There’s no way they can trust it.

As it happens, I can’t think of a better way to describe how we, as humans, think about our thinking.

If you’re like most people, your thinking will be the tool you use to navigate the world.

But forget the content of your thoughts for a moment. 

Have you ever considered the source of those thoughts?

If your answer to this question is “my thoughts come from whatever is going on in my life”, that’s not really what I’m getting at.

And if your answer is “by neurons firing in my brain”, that’s not really what I’m getting at either.

I’d like to invite you take a look before all this.  To go back to the source as far as you can.

For instance:

Where do thoughts go when they leave you?  

And is this the same place they come from?

Questions like these don't have right or wrong answers.  But they’re useful questions to ponder.

Just like chess preparation, understanding the source of thought tells us more about our thoughts than the thoughts themselves.

And if you want to relax whatever grip your thinking has on you or use the power of thought in the most helpful way, I can’t think of a better place to look.

That’s all for today.

Have a great weekend.

 - Tom