December 03, 2004
Writing vs. Chess
I'm not sure if the two are mutually exclusive or not, but as my writing output has increased due to papers due, my chess skills have declined rapidly. My blitz rating (which has never been very good) dropped from ~1550 to just under 1400 in about two weeks. I suppose it's also possible that I've just been unable to concentrate, but I was able to write close to 11 pages today which requires at least a modicum of concentration. This leads me to hypothesize that there is something antithetical to the modes of thought required for writing and chess. The latter is primarily visualization and calculation, while the former is necessarily verbalization and intuition. Some intuition is certainly needed for chess (that's how you prune the branches, after all), but of a different kind than that for paper-writing. As I've increasingly been thinking in the way of words, my prowess at the board has diminished.
Fatigue mano, fatigue. Your brain may be able to output 12 pages and 16 games of chess this time next year, but you're just a freshman essentially. You need more time to gain mental endurance
Hmm.. possibly. I do think it's a different kind of concentration, though. As I went on with my paper I became more fluent, not less. That doesn't seem to imply fatigue to me. That said, fatigue might prevent me from shifting to different thought modes easily. I dunno. I played Doom 3 pretty well later. :) Got to the beserker part where you start killing zombies with your fists (as you can tell I'm not very far along).