Excelling in any field of life, requires one common effort- being consistent in whatever one does, independent of the outcomes
and results; or as millennials would call — Eat,Sleep,Repeat. And
if the stakes are as high as the moves in a game of chess, simply being
great isn’t enough, one has to be great under pressure against the World’s best. The book Mind-Master is about one such journey of a boy from Madras who overcame all odds winning any sport at an International
level requires- challenging the status quo of a game dominated by Russians, overcoming the advent of technology to outmuscle the human memory and most importantly carrying a billion hopes every time he drew the Rook out of his Chess Corner. Not getting into technicality of the chess moves, this summary draws parallels between a chess-board and engineering problems, key being mastering the devil-mind.
- Contextual and Photographic Memory: Human memory is a very deceptive thing, the more we think we get it, the more it surprises with its intricacies. In quest to become India’s first Grandmaster, Vishy had to study a lot of past and contemporary games and analyse the best moves on a chess-board. The default option to remember games is erroneous to the volume of chess games played in his career and hence Vishy aced to remember the context, every game he studied was like a vivid photograph to him. Often he struggled with what each piece stood for, but as a collection he could recall games from his childhood and apply the same in the context of a running problem. Engineering problems aren’t much different, while the job interviews stress the art of remembering the algorithms, the day to day jobs to scale modern businesses require using one’s past context to choose the best design/debugging solutions to a newer business problem.
- Horizontal and Vertical Players: For all of his contemporary chess action, he bucketed them into two playing styles- players who were firm
on a chess live and think N moves ahead on a board or players who could think of N scenarios from a given chess position. While each one has its limitations, the key to becoming five time world champion was knowing when to pick either styles on a board depending on the opponent. When it comes to solving daily engineering problems at work, teams get fixated on solutioning first without all navigating all possible cases of a problem or at times over discussing the pros and cons of every possible approach, as a result alluding from the original solution. Key to mastering these everyday solutions is knowing when to wear a given lens of a Horizontal / Vertical Chess player in the design meeting. - Gift and the Grit: Before his first World Championship, the chess world referred to Vishy as a talented player. The double edged appreciation would have been deceptive for any normal human mind, however subconsciously he knew what he lacked-grit, something the Russian players developed early in their childhood. A decade later he left no stone unturned, ruthless in his methodology and reaching the top of Chess Summit. Oftentimes early successes in our engineering careers are traps, traps which get further magnified by the dogmatic organisational /corporate ladder. The grittier ones learn a method to this madness fuelled by failures in everything they do and end up powering talent as positive catalyst not a limiting agent for change
The book is collection of examples drawn in form of chess moves, life experiences with his wife Aruna and son Akhil, his coaching and support staff, exchanges (sweet/bitter) with his rivals- all tied with a single motto,
the motto to learn everyday and outdo his talent/abilities whether it was a player in game or a human being to his family and friends. The Lightning Kid was never fascinated by his speed in the blitz game to outfox his duels, rather worried by the speed at which he could unwind a winning position into a losing one-maybe the most important element to Mastering the Mind.
