Chess is one of my favorite games. To be precise, I like all sorts of classic strategic board games, from Go to Xiangqi, to backgammon and whatever. Chess, though, is the only one in which I have achieved a “good enough” level of competence. I am not great (mostly because I get easily distracted), but I can play without constantly cursing my stupidity.

It is also the only game I know well enough to offer advice. For instance, the only way to get better at chess is to 1) play a lot with challenging opponents (not too strong, not pushovers), 2) study common patterns and lines, and 3) review your games.

It was during one of those reviews that I thought these three rules apply to more than chess: they are valuable to life in general.

How do we become better human beings? One, by living on the boundary of our comfort zone and challenging ourselves. Two, by noticing and studying good/bad behavioral patterns in our life:¹ we have to stop to do the same mistakes and we have to spot in advance actions that lead to positive outcomes. Three, we have to review our days. I do that by keeping a journal, but there are a lot of other “reviewing” processes.

This is not an “How to live a Good Life” kind of post, so I will focus on the review step because I have a “chess-inspired” system that I’ve found useful.

In chess, while we review a game, we can annotate important moves with a symbol signaling whether a move has been good, even brilliant, a mistake, or a flat-out blunder. For instance, we can write !! to indicate that a move is exceptionally good (e.g., Be4!!, where Be4 means “moving the Bishop to the e4 square”). On the other hand, we can use ?? to indicate that a move is a blunder (e.g., Qe1??, where Qe1 means moving the Queen to e1).

My idea was to use a similar notation to annotate my day. At the end of each day, after evaluating the last 24 hours, I write the most essential thing that happened that day² and assign it a score. On paper, I may directly use the chess-inspired notation. In Obsidian (or any other digital system), I prefer to use a numeric score, as it is easier to calculate fancy statistics on it (for instance, to get a month’s average score).

You can also go the fancier route and download the Chess.com Analysis Icons and add some color to your daily review. For instance, you can make stickers out of them to put on your calendar or journal, or you can use them digitally in your Obsidian Daily Note.³

After a while you can use this data like you would in chess. To improve your life, you want fewer days marked as blunders with negative scores and more days with positive scores. You may start to see patterns in the data: maybe all your negative days involve a particular task, event, or feeling. That’s great; now you have something to work on.

It is stupidly simple and yet very effective.

Okay, but what does it mean to have a Good/Bad Day?

I know what you are thinking: this is another stupid “productivity optimization” trick. But the point is that it doesn’t have to be. You are the one deciding what “good” and “bad” mean. Sure, you can use “good” for productive days, but you don’t have to.

I personally evaluate my days in a broader sense: I check whether the days moved me in the direction of the person I want to be or further from it. Some of my +2 days are days in which I did absolutely nothing other than spend time with people I care about. Some days, if I perform an act of kindness, I award myself a +1 even if my TODO list is untouched.

What if I need more scores?

From my personal experience, a spread between -2 and +2 is more than enough. You don’t want to spend too much time arguing about the granularity of a “good day” and “more than good but not exceptional” day.

However, if you reach a point in which most of your days are +1 (lucky you!) it makes sense to extend the scale. If you don’t want to change the maximum value to +3, you can just use a +1.5 score in between 1 and 2.

How long is a “game”?

Chess games are finite. You complete a game, review it, and apply the lessons in the next one. How does this apply to life? Ideally, you will build a habit and keep adding a small score every time you journal. However, I am not that naive.

Like every other “system” or technique, you can apply it for as long as it is useful. You don’t have to commit to it for the rest of your life.

I think it is helpful to have at least a month of data to work with. It is hard to notice patterns with less. So my advice is to try it for a month, see if you spot any valuable insights, and then stop. When you think you need another set of data, you can start again.

What kind of pattern can I see?

It depends on how you defined “good” days and “blunder” days. As I said, I defined mine in a eudaimonic way, trying to condense whether a day moved me toward more (or less) satisfaction in life (including social, family, and work aspects). Some patterns I discovered are on the obvious side: I have better days when I am not at home all day or when I hike. Others are more subtle: the days I work on fiction or on some open source software lead to better days than successfully completing work tasks during my day job. This tells something about myself that I will have to discuss with myself at some point.

On the other hand, some patterns are only valid during specific periods of my life. For instance, I discovered that coffee was negatively impacting my scores early this summer. I also had to use my journal and my memory to understand why my scores were going down. Maybe it was a coincidence, but at least I had some data to back it up.

Conclusion

That’s it. I don’t want to make this too long. It is a stupidly simple concept, and it doesn’t require 3,000 words.

Just remember the key principle: like in chess, the goal of reviewing is not to play perfect games: but to learn to play better ones. Will this system solve all your problems? Of course not, but it might help you enough to make a small course correction. And as any good chess player knows, small advantages compound over time.