Positional Chess
Playing a positional style of living, you focus on positioning yourself to make the most of the flood of both risks and opportunities heading towards you.
Recently, I listened to episode 163 of "The Knowledge Project" podcast hosted by Shane Parrish.
In the episode, Shane's guest Jason Karp talks about the two different types of playing chess - combinational chess and positional chess - and how they relate to life.
Combinational chess refers to the original style of playing chess where each player makes his moves based on his anticipations of the next move(s) of the opponent.
Playing positional chess on the other hand, the primary goal is not to correctly anticipate the opponent's moves.
Instead, the goal is to position your own pieces in such a way, that you can resiliently defend all kinds of possible moves the opponent might make whether you see them or not.
These days, pretty much all grandmasters play positional chess.
How does this relate to life? The essence?
Positional chess is an acknowledgement of the limitations of your own capacity to process and predict all possible outcomes of a given situation.
Instead of seeing that as a limitation though, it's a strategy to come out on top of this uncertainty regardless.
By being properly positioned on the board of chess and on the board of life, you are much more resilient towards unexpected moves but you are also much more nimble to take advantage of opportunities to move forward because your pieces are positioned to do so.
Playing a positional style of living, instead of you focus on positioning yourself to make the most of the flood of both risks and opportunities heading towards you
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