Kasparov was asked: how you are able to calculate all possible outcomes of the game. He said: I don’t. I just have very good understanding of current situation.
I think there’s a broader lesson to this ability to zoom out, soft focus, take in the whole situation as it is now, and just let good ideas come to you. Chess is an easy illustration because all information is contained on the board and the clock, and the rules and objective are clear. Vaguely, it seems like successful people are able to construct a model of the whole situation, while less successful people get caught up in hyperfocusing on the particularities.
Kasparov was asked: how you are able to calculate all possible outcomes of the game. He said: I don’t. I just have very good understanding of current situation.
I think there’s a broader lesson to this ability to zoom out, soft focus, take in the whole situation as it is now, and just let good ideas come to you. Chess is an easy illustration because all information is contained on the board and the clock, and the rules and objective are clear. Vaguely, it seems like successful people are able to construct a model of the whole situation, while less successful people get caught up in hyperfocusing on the particularities.
I think that they are also to find the most important problem from all.
It’s probably helpful to be able to take in everything in order to do that—I think these two ideas go together.
I also had an n-back boost using visualisation, see my shortform.