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I Quit My Job to Study Chess for 7 Months and Beat a National Master
The lessons learned from 57 tournament rated games, 200+ hours of deliberate practice, and finding out who I really am in the process.
I had everything going for me in the summer of 2018.
I was on track to hit $100,000 in business for the first time ever as a digital marketing consultant, the largest amount of money I had ever made as a young professional. I had just signed a contract to work with a New York Times bestselling author, someone that I’ve dreamed about collaborating with ever since I dropped out of college at 18. I was living the “digital nomad” life working remotely and adventuring around South Africa, Mexico, Thailand, and more places.
But on August 11, 2018, I quit everything, moved back home to San Francisco with no stable income, and devoted the next chapter of my life to chess.
There is a famous story of a messager traveling to meet King Charles I with dire news: their allies betrayed them and their army is on the verge of losing the war. But the king doesn’t even glance up from his chessboard as he is deep into thought. He kept playing. Nothing else was more important than the war happening on the board, despite you know, having your whole country burn down in flames.
When Charles was eventually executed, the first English monarch ever to be put to death, he was allowed to bring two items with him to the scaffold where he was beheaded: a Bible and his chessboard.
Ask any serious chess player if they can relate to this story and they will immediately “get it.” Not the beheading part of course, but being fully immersed in the game. This was where my head was (no pun intended) during this new transition. I couldn’t stop thinking about the game and if there was any “good” time to do be fully immersed, it was now.
The beginning
I started playing chess casually as a kid with my younger sister. During summer break, my dad would bring us both to his computer…
