Training quote of the day #63: Viswanathan Anand

  

From Mind Master: Winning Lessons From A Champion's Life by GM Viswanathan Anand:

The rule of thumb for remembering deeply is to look at a position once, then not look at it for a day, then go over it once again and skip it for three days, and then go back and look at it yet again. By the eighth time you’ve looked at it, your brain has already encoded the memory and every time you come back to it, it only gets reinforced. In recent years, what I often do is take photographs of all the positions I want to revise and keep them on my phone. When I’m on a flight, I flip through them. The idea is to expose my brain to what I want it to recall. This exercise, though, is unlikely to offer results if done over too short a span of time. By the third time the brain may have switched off. If done on an irregular schedule for one or two weeks, by the end of the second week the image of the positions on the board would have lodged itself in the mind. Although, even that may not be permanent. It’s helpful to revise the position or idea a month later, repeat the same after three more months and by the end of the year it should have set up camp in your brain. The only guarantee to remembering is periodic revision. The intervals can be lengthened, but at the end of each break there should be a refresher course waiting.