I haven’t dusted off my Scotch Gambit for a good few years.

My Dad/Coach/Newsletter Guy era is in full swing and the royal sixty four squares have certainly taken a back seat.

But back when I lived in Edinburgh, I’d often play chess two or three times a week. I even went on a few chess holidays to exotic locations like Prague, Copenhagen and The King’s Head in Kilmarnock. And I was very much living and breathing chess. Not just playing it, but reading lots of chess books, studying the openings and following the big-gun Grandmasters online whenever a new super tournament kicked off.

All of which means I clocked a few handy chess-based lessons.

Especially when it comes to time.

Here's what I noticed:

*** Spending more time doesn’t mean you’ll make a better move. In fact, it often means you’ll make a worse move. The quality of your thinking matters much more than the quantity of your thinking

*** Some chess moves cost you time and others buy you time. A strong move early in a game can radically simplify the position and make the rest of the game much quicker and easier. Another move might turn the game into the chess equivalent of leaving Baby Grundy alone with a bowl of spaghetti

*** There’s never enough time to play the perfect game of chess. But there usually is enough time to beat your opponent. Good enough is good enough…

*** There’s one hell of a difference between using time and wasting time. Thinking through a critical position is one thing. Running the variations in your head to check something you’ve already checked six times is another

*** There are positions where it pays to invest as much time as possible and positions where it pays to do the opposite

*** Any chess player who has been around the chess block long enough will tell you that time pressure isn’t something you can ever really solve and nor should you try. It’s a feature of the game instead. The clock tick, tick, ticks away next to the chessboard whether you like it or not. You’ve got however much time you’ve got, your opponent has however much time they’ve got and that’s that. So best to work with time rather than fight against it

So there you have it. Six useful, true and practical handy chess hints.

Perhaps you're nodding along. Maybe you've even spotted one or two ideas you can use away from the chessboard. 

But here's what I didn't say:

All these chess hints flow from a much deeper principle. Almost as if this principle is pulling the strings behind the scenes. And the more you see the truth of this principle and how it doesn't just operate at the chessboard but in all walks of life, the more you'll find yourself naturally working with time rather than against it.

Maybe that sounds a bit mysterious. 

But if you join my new workshop Reclaim Your Evening, I’ll remove all the mystery and reveal exactly what this principle is and why it has such profound implications for how you think about and use your time.

If you’d like to make easier decisions about when to stop working, if you’d like to start doing more of the stuff you keep putting off and if you’d like your free time to actually feel like your free time rather than ruminating about tomorrow, this is the workshop for you.

All the details are here:

Reclaim Your Evening

If you’re interested, don't hang around. The deadline to sign up is 8pm UK Time // 3pm EDT // Midday PT.

After then, it’s checkmate.

To fulfilment,

Tom