Obsession, Chess, and the Myth of Mastery | James & Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam on the "New in Chess" Podcast

So the question is, I really feel in order to get not good at something, but great at something, you have to be obsessed. You can't just be obsessed about anything. I can't just wake up one morning and say, I'm going to be obsessed about learning languages today or I'm going to be obsessed at math or investing or whatever today. You have to be legitimately deep down obsessed.

And I think obsession has good connotations and bad connotations. Like, you know, obsession is like addiction. Like you have to want something more than you want just about anything else in life. And that kind of reminds me of the definitions of addiction. And so you have to have a little bit, a little bit of craziness to be obsessed, a little bit of something almost wrong with you.

So there's a couple questions. One is, can you nurture that obsession in yourself and do it in a healthy way? And I'm not so sure. Like whenever I've gotten obsessed with something, it's hurt other areas of my life. It removes the balance from your life.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (63 minutes, 12,111 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 5 episodes for $3.49, and monthly plans are cheaper still.