My friend, Ashutosh Sathe gave me the idea of writing a weekly write-up about whatever I do. Weekly will be too much for me, so I decided to do a monthly wrap-up. Clearly, he has a lot of faith in my consistency 🙂
The month started quite quietly and ended without much ups and downs.
This is my first post on writing something like this. Hopefully, you all will enjoy it. I will try to cover this in various aspects.
1- Life
This is not the most interesting part in almost all chess players’ lives. As a chess coach and player, most of life goes at home, sitting in front of a laptop. Outside life is almost non-existent. So it’s more like food is life. Here are some food stories.
Recently, I have started tasting different teas and, as usual, coffees. This month, I tried Pahadi Story Masala Chai, which is awesome. It’s rich in aroma and very flavourful.
Then I tried Cosmix plant-based protein. It’s one of the best protein powders I have found in the Indian market for now. It tastes chocolaty but perfectly mildly sweet. I bought a trial pack and tried all 5 flavours. My favourites are Mahabaleshwar Strawberry, Mocha, and Indonesian Cocoa. Probably I will stick to it.
On the 23rd, we celebrated a family member’s birthday, and I ate Pav Bhaji after months! It was so good. Not at peak, but I was really happy as I was trying it after months.
Some Random Food Photos which I tried:
2- Work
Coaching went pretty well. March was the first month when I started group classes for the 1500–1800 group. It went well, and the batch became full. March is a very dull month in terms of tournaments. My students also didn’t play many tournaments due to exams. It was an okayish month.
As a chess coach, April to August are very important months. April–May are holidays in India, and then mid-June to mid-August are holidays in the USA. So generally, during those months, I get additional class requests and more enquiries than usual.
3- Chess and Tournaments
After becoming an IM, my own chess practice has been quite slow, and I am not doing it as much as I should. I am also not very sure about continuing chess full-time. Although that double confusion is always there for most chess players.
I played 2 Rapid and 2 Blitz tournaments this month and lost many rating points due to poor performance in the National Rapid and Blitz. Overall, nothing much to say. In April, I am planning to play 2 Rapids and 2 Blitz.
Once all this global situation reduces, I may think of playing some classical events.
4- Courses
I added this recently and started working very hard on it. I still feel like there are very few good course creators who take full responsibility, and I also see a lot of potential in this business if you create and target the correct audience.
I am selling my courses on Gumroad, and this month (one day remaining), I got 70+ sales. 3 customers bought all the courses, and that’s probably the best for me.
In March, I launched 2 new courses and one pre-launch which is going to launch in April. Following is the course list:
Overall, it surpassed my expectations.
For readers, they can use the code MARCHEND to get 30% off until 2nd April.
5- Content
I managed to publish some good content pieces on YouTube and on my website. ChessBase India also published my article about Slow Growth in Chess, which I feel is the best-written article by me. Following is the list:
2- Slow Growth in Chess on ChessBase India
I published some YouTube Shorts. I realised that short-form content doesn’t work if you are not able to catch the audience in 2–3 seconds. I will now stick to long-form content in videos, and I will post both short and long-form content in blogging.
6- Reading
I completed reading one book: The Minimalist Entrepreneur by Sahil Lavingia. He is the founder of Gumroad, and I am a huge fan of him and his business. I bought this book previously and had read around 20%. This time, I finished it within 2–3 days. First proper book finished in recent months.
The Minimalist Entrepreneur –
I have also started reading Tiny Experiments, and from next month’s recap, you will see some tiny experiments I did recently.
Overall, the month went great and positive!
This is my first monthly write up. Do let me know how I can make this more interesting!