The Full Stack: On chess and beginner learnings

Hi pals! Welcome to The Full Stack, where we design a purposeful life through one proven concept each week, along with a practical experiment to bring it to life.

(Stick with me, I promise you don’t need to know how to play chess to get these!)

💡 Concept

When I started learning how to play chess earlier this year, one foundational lesson stood out:

To control the center is to control the game.

1) Mobility: Expanding your options

A knight in the center can access more spots around it, allowing it to attack and defend flexibly.

How this applies to life:

For me, this principle translates to having a strong financial base.

Depending on your financial strength, this could mean building an emergency fund, investing your money wisely, or having enough liquid money to pursue what matters most to you.

Financial security offers you the freedom to take advantage of opportunities. It eases the fear of exploring the unknown, and not feel stuck and limited by a lack of resources.

2) Range: Extending your reach

A bishop can cover more ground in multiple directions, if it’s in the center.

How this applies to life:

Broadening your knowledge and skills has a similar effect of expanding how far you can go.

The more you know across diverse subjects and skills, the quicker you can spot opportunities and offer value where it will be appreciated.

Knowledge and skills equip you to synthesize information and see solutions where others might miss. This would help you move fluidly between different domains, or move laterally into something new and be able to maneuver successfully.

3) Influence: Shaping your environment

When your pieces are controlling the center, your opponent has to react, rather than be proactive about their strategy.

How this applies to life:

Taking on leadership roles (whether in your career, your personal life, or community) allows you to shape the culture and pace around you.

While life isn’t like a simple win/lose/draw like chess, and should be abundant for everyone, it is about setting the tone for growth and guiding directions.

Instead of passively waiting for things to happen and reacting to circumstances, you influence the environment around you, inspiring progress and action for yourself and others.

🧪 Experiment

Hypothesis:

Defining one new grounding habit as your daily center helps in controlling your day

Experiment set-up:

1. Choose your center: What small action can help you feel grounded? It could be reading for 10 minutes, having a quieter morning coffee, or walking.

2. Pick a time: Our brains love patterns and predictability, so this ensures we follow through

3. Notice: Does the rest of your schedule fall more naturally into place? Are you feeling better about practicing the habit?

For me, my experiment is going to be for taking my vitamins, which I am inconsistent with. I’ll stack it with my quiet morning coffee time, and in a week’s time I’ll see if I’m still forgetting it 5 out of the 7 days.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you’ve enjoyed it!

If you are into chess, this is the most hilarious checkmate/endgame I have ever seen in my short chess life and I hope you enjoy that as much as I did.

Cheers,
Jalyn

_{If you’ve reached this far down… I’m committed to bringing new ideas and experiments every week, so if you liked this concept, I’d really appreciate if you would forward this email to someone who might also find it interesting and helpful.}