u/Fantastic_Roof623

this is gonna sound dumb but bear with me.

I've been trying to be consistent with chess practice for years and always knew the answer was to grind puzzles. every system i tried failed. i'd plan to do 15 minutes a day, i'd forget. or i'd open lichess in a "work break" and get distracted and close it. classic. i kept telling myself i needed to be more disciplined. while doing exactly nothing about it.

a month ago i tried something different. instead of waiting until i felt disciplined enough to actually start doing the thing, i used one upfront act of discipline to force my future self into it. picked a moment i was already doing dozens of times a day (waking my mac), and made it so a fullscreen puzzle pops up and i have to solve it to reach my desktop. 5-10 seconds. picks a new one each time, adapts to my level.

30 days later: i've solved 300+ puzzles, gained the consistence and no longer hate myself for forgetting (literally can't forget anymore lol).

most of us have been thinking about discipline wrong. we wait for it to come to us. but how long do we have to wait before we actually decide enough is enough? stop waiting to magically become discipline, start forcing habits onto yourself, that's what works (at least for me).

i think this applies to anything you've been seriously trying to do but never starting. instead of waiting for the version of you who naturally does the thing, set up your environment so the thing happens regardless of who you are that day.

anyone else found this kind of thing works for habits you've been stuck on? curious what you stack onto what.

the first 10 seconds of every laptop unlock are kinda just gone for me. like i open it, the desktop appears, my brain doesn't have anything specific queued up, and i'm in whatever the algorithm wanted me in. doesn't even matter what i'd opened the laptop for.

a month ago i tried filling those 10 seconds with something valuable. picked chess puzzles because i'd been trying to make chess practice a daily habit for a year or so and never could stick with it. rule was just solve the puzzle to get to the mac, then do whatever (be it scrolling or whatever).

my screen time after a month is basically the same as before lol so i didn't really fix the scrolling. but i ended up doing ~10 puzzles a day without ever deciding to.

the part that actually surprised me is i'd been mushing two different problems into one. there's using my laptop less, and then there's getting something useful out of the moments i can't avoid using it.

not sure if this counts as nosurf or not. just thought it could be interesting, maybe since we can't necessarily eliminate the scrolling yet, we might as well get some value out of it. thoughts?

I'm currently using TelemetryDeck, thinking of switching to PostHog's free tier to get finer grain data.
What do you use and why?

I'm 1100 in 10-min and like everyone here I "should" be doing daily tactics.
I never actually do them.

A few weeks ago I tried something different; I built an app to force me to do puzzle.
Every time I unlock my mac, a puzzle appears fullscreen, can't get to my desktop until I solve it. Just checked the stats: 34 puzzles in the last 5 days. 26 solved, 8 failed.
I genuinely did not realize I was doing this much. It's just folded into the day: open laptop, solve, get to work.

ps: no link as this is not advertisement, I am just proud of what I built and thought you'd find it interesting : )

I'm 1100 in 10-min and like everyone here I "should" be doing daily tactics.
I never actually do them.

A few weeks ago I tried something different; I built an app to force me to do puzzle.
Every time I unlock my mac, a puzzle appears fullscreen, can't get to my desktop until I solve it. Just checked the stats: 34 puzzles in the last 5 days. 26 solved, 8 failed.
I genuinely did not realize I was doing this much. It's just folded into the day: open laptop, solve, get to work.

ps: no link as this is not advertisement, I am just proud of what I built and thought you'd find it interesting : )

I'm 1100 in 10-min and like everyone here I "should" be doing daily tactics.
I never actually do them.

A few weeks ago I tried something different; I built an app to force me to do puzzle.
Every time I unlock my mac, a puzzle appears fullscreen, can't get to my desktop until I solve it. Just checked the stats: 34 puzzles in the last 5 days. 26 solved, 8 failed.
I genuinely did not realize I was doing this much. It's just folded into the day: open laptop, solve, get to work.

Question for the sub: Has anyone else used "forced" or "ambient" practice setups for chess? Browser extensions, lockscreen things, pop-ups, anything that takes the decision out of the loop? Curious whether it actually compounds long-term or whether your brain just learns to autopilot through it.

ps: no link as this is not advertisement, I am just proud of what I built and thought you'd find it interesting : )

I like chess, and I like playing here and there, but am stagnant at 1000 for a while now, and cannot seem to be consistent in solving puzzles which is commonly accepted as one of the best ways to improve especially in mid and late game. Wondering about how I could stop forgetting and be more consistent in solving chess puzzles, I reached for my phone and just like that the idea came to me: what if, every time I unlocked my phone, I was forced to solve a chess puzzle to access it? So I built ChessUnlock on mobile at first with the same logic. After a week of trying it out, I realized I often needed to use my phone in contexts where solving a puzzle was counter productive (in a rush, on a bike, etc) so then I thought, why not the computer? So I built the same concept for my Mac, and that's when it clicked. I struck the perfect balance where I don't unlock my computer as many times as my phone (so not overwhelming), I use it sitting down (right context for a 10 second think) and I'll usually use it for a longer period, making the 10-15 second solve feel reasonable. After trying it for a couple of weeks now, it feels natural, smooth and ingrained in the process of accessing my Mac.

This is essentially habit-stacking (Atomic Habits, BJ Fogg's tiny habits research) applied to the one device where the friction-to-context ratio actually works out, chaining a new habit onto an existing automatic one (unlocking your computer) rather than relying on willpower to open a tactics app.

Local-first, fully offline.

TLDR: You need to solve a chess puzzle to access your mac.

I like chess, and I like playing here and there, but am stagnant at 1000 for a while now, and cannot seem to be consistent in solving puzzles which is commonly accepted as one of the best ways to improve especially in mid and late game. Wondering about how I could stop forgetting and be more consistent in solving chess puzzles, I reached for my phone and just like that the idea came to me: what if, every time I unlocked my phone, I was forced to solve a chess puzzle to access it? So I built ChessUnlock on mobile at first with the same logic. After a week of trying it out, I realized I often needed to use my phone in contexts where solving a puzzle was counter productive (in a rush, on a bike, etc) so then I thought, why not the computer? So I built the same concept for my Mac, and that's when it clicked. I struck the perfect balance where I don't unlock my computer as many times as my phone (so not overwhelming), I use it sitting down (right context for a 10 second think) and I'll usually use it for a longer period, making the 10-15 second solve feel reasonable. After trying it for a couple of weeks now, it feels natural, smooth and ingrained in the process of accessing my Mac.

This is essentially habit-stacking (Atomic Habits, BJ Fogg's tiny habits research) applied to the one device where the friction-to-context ratio actually works out, chaining a new habit onto an existing automatic one (unlocking your computer) rather than relying on willpower to open a tactics app.

TLDR: You need to complete a chess puzzle to access your mac.

I know it is a commonly accepted fact that puzzles help recognize patterns in games and makes you a stronger player. But. Do you actually feel like you have become stronger by drilling puzzles?