Training quote of the day #60: Daniel Pink

 

From Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink:

Mastery Is a Mindset

...For instance, consider goals. Dweck says they come in two varieties - performance goals and learning goals. Getting an A in French class is a performance goal. Being able to speak French is a learning goal. "Both goals are entirely normal and pretty much universal," Dweck says, "and both can fuel achievement." But only one leads to mastery. In several studies, Dweck found that giving children a performance goal...was effective for relatively straightforward problems but often inhibited children's ability to apply the concepts to new situations...Students with learning goals scored significantly higher on these novel challenges. They also worked longer and tried more solutions. As Dweck writes, "With a learning goal, students don't have to feel they're already good at something in order to hang in and keep trying. After all, their goal is to learn, not to prove they're smart."

How Wei Yi makes us feel better about chess

GM Wei Yi earned his place in this year's Candidates Tournament through strong, world-class play. But as this round 3 game against GM Fabiano Caruana demonstrates, even world-class players can blunder. In this case, why did it happen? Evidently GM Yi missed the combination of a backwards knight move unveiling a lateral, long-distance queen attack on his trapped bishop. It is this sort of difficult, non-automatic visualization challenge that can more often derail Class players, so it is at least somewhat comforting to know that chess can be hard for everyone.

[Event "FIDE Candidates Tournament 2026"] [Site "Chess.com"] [Date "2026.03.31"] [Round "3"] [White "Caruana, Fabiano"] [Black "Wei, Yi"] [Result "1-0"] [ECO "A34"] [WhiteElo "2795"] [BlackElo "2754"] [WhiteFideId "-1"] [BlackFideId "-1"] [PlyCount "37"] [GameId "2294223087464466"] [EventDate "2026.??.??"] 1. Nf3 Nf6 2. c4 c5 3. g3 g6 4. Nc3 d5 5. cxd5 Nxd5 6. Bg2 Bg7 7. Qa4+ Nc6 8. Ng5 Nb6 9. Bxc6+ bxc6 10. Qxc6+ Bd7 11. Qxc5 h6 12. Nf3 Rc8 13. Qa5 Bh3 14. Qb5+ Nd7 15. Rg1 {this looks strange, but the point comes on the next move.} O-O 16. g4 {now the Bh3 is trapped, but White is not close to being able to exploit that...but it turns out, not too far from it, either.} Rc5 17. Qb3 {lining up the queen on the 3rd rank. Still no danger yet, with two pieces in between the Qb3 and Bh3. However, this changes immediately after} Ne5 $2 18. Nxe5 Rxe5 19. Nd1 {a backwards knight move unveiling a lateral, long-distance discovered attack wins for Caruana.} 1-0