Steve Paslina: Habit change is like chess

Steve Paslina has an insightful post on how to break habits and create new ones. He compares changing a habit to a game of chess.

There is an early game, where you don’t directly work on the habit in the beginning but set yourself up for the change.

In the middle game, you analyze what you need to successfully go to the end game. Such as researching about people who already made this change, knowing the difficulties you are going to face and preparing alternatives to make it easy.

In the end game you sail through, if you have executed the early game and the middle game perfectly.

Comparing it to my GMAT preparation, I can find some similarities that I implemented.

Long before I started preparing, I read through the experiences of previous exam takers.

Then read through the problems they faced and how confidence plummets in between, how frustration creeps in, etc. Made up my own ways of how I thought I would face all these tides.

In the end game started my preparation based on other’s experiences. Though I faced all the same problems at least I was not taken by surprise.

Read the whole post here.