The Chess Players by Thomas Eakins

As architects, long-term thinking is an inherent part of our work. It can be years before we see the fruits of our labor on a project. It’s just the name of the game. When we go into a new design problem, we understand that it will take numerous iterations before we find the right solution. But early on, when we are in school or in our beginning years as a professional, the long-term mindset hasn’t quite yet set in. We haven’t gone through the trials and tribulations of our older, more experienced counterparts. Sometimes, our lives may take an unorthodox turn. We might end up taking an unconventional job, for instance, while everyone else is killing it at a firm. When we can see the bigger picture of our journey, things like setbacks or even trying something outrageous becomes a more manageable thought. Let’s see how we can begin to adopt some principles of a long-term mindset in our professional progress.

Life, in all its complexity, is an experience that operates in a continuous cycle. We have good seasons, and we have not so good seasons. It is a pendulum, and for most of us college educated folk, opportunity is abundant, and the future is hopeful. I was talking to a friend of mine earlier this week. He has decided to pursue an unconventional path in architecture but has been having some difficulty getting started. Devotion isn’t the issue here, he is motivated to pursue this new direction, but has faced some discouragement. All of his colleagues are working in firms while he has yet to be paid (or see a return) for his new venture.

Sometimes it takes time to build things up, especially something different. We talked about Picasso and his introduction of Cubism to the art world, he was ridiculed, but then later praised. We also talked about Einstein and how he didn’t blossom right out of school. Even look at a powerhouse like Benjamin Franklin, who was conned as an adolescent and taken for a fool but later became one of our most cherished Founding Fathers. Things take time to play out, and there is no way to know how events will unfold along the way. We can do our best to plan, but in the end, we have to be adaptive. For instance, most readers decided to become architects and took the logical step to enroll in college. But, all of the events that unfolded while in school could have never been predicted. Once you made the initial decision, you had to adjust for what was thrown at you.

Chess Minded

I used to be a chess fanatic. I had lessons, practiced every day, and studied old games. One thing that chess provides is an ability to think ahead in a systematic and almost poetic manner. I’ve always associated the skills from chess into my design thinking as well as my overall life. People who don’t play chess often misunderstand the nuances that go into the game. A game that has an almost infinite amount of possibilities can seem daunting. It might seem impossible for one person to calculate so many variations, but the secret is in knowing what to pursue. When my opponent makes a move, there might be countless possible outcomes, but I am only focusing on two or three. Based on his playing, I have to make a judgment of what I can anticipate.

One of the foundational principles in chess is to develop a sound strategy to execute against the other side. We use tactics to realize our established strategy or plan of action. It’s important here to understand that there is a difference between strategy and tactics. A strategy is the bigger picture, for example, in chess, I might decide that I want to attack my opponent’s “queenside” or I might want to maintain “center control” of the board.

I would use tactics to realize those strategies. So while I’m working to attack my opponent’s queenside, I may use “forks” and “skewers,” or I might “pin” some of his pieces. These are all names of different kinds of maneuvers in chess, different tactics. For example, a fork is when I attack two pieces at the same time. Maybe my opponent’s bishop is protecting an important square, and I need to get rid of it, I may move my knight to a square that checks his king while also attacking this bishop. That would force him to move the king, allowing me to capture the bishop on my next move. As a result, his queenside is now weakened and his king on the run — my strategy is unfolding.

The Game of the Century

There is a famous chess game between a 13-year-old Bobby Fischer and a 26-year-old Donald Byrne. In it, Fischer, the victor, performs what many consider the greatest sacrifice in the history of chess. At a pivotal point in the match, it’s Fischer’s move, he sits there and thinks for a while, and then makes his move, leaving his queen (his most powerful piece) out to dry! Byrne is confused. Surely this 13-year-old boy has made a mistake. He happily takes the queen, which is precisely what Fischer wanted. In the end, the young Bobby Fischer completely destroyed his older opponent. 

The beautiful thing about chess is that each player is forced to solve a new problem after every move. It is a game that teaches us that things don’t always go as planned. Byrne could never have guessed that Fischer would make such a bizarre move. He did his best to respond by modifying his plan; this is the essence of the game. While our strategies may still be intact, we need to be flexible as they unfold. Sometimes life can throw us uncertainties, we can let them dominate us or we can embrace their inherent part of the bigger picture. 

Dealing with the Black Swan

In his book The Black Swan, author Nassim Taleb discusses how uncertainty and randomness influence our lives. This idea is the basis for his Black Swan Theory, “A Black Swan,” according to Taleb, “is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.” Taleb goes on to show us how we try to predict events that are impossible to determine before they occur. No matter how deep our understanding, Black Swans will occur, and they catch us off guard. Remember, despite Donald Byrne’s analytical prowess, Fischer still caught him by surprise!

“Black Swan logic makes what you don’t know far more relevant than what you do know,” the author explains. It is in focusing on “antiknowledge,” or what we don’t know that our plans can begin to flourish. When we accept that events outside of our control are inevitably going to happen, we give ourselves the freedom to operate in a more agile way.  

For my friend I mentioned earlier, there is a clear plan of action that he is diligently following. But he also has had some pleasant surprises during his journey: a professor who offered to help him progress, an acquaintance who opened the door to a job opportunity, that opportunity giving him ideas for more things to pursue. These were his Black Swans, and they have turned out to have positively influenced his mission. He still must utilize different tactics along the way, go out and network, continue to hone his skills, but throughout everything, his overall approach (or strategy) is the same: to progress as fast as possible and seize the best opportunity when it presents itself.

Using No Way As Way

I’ve mentioned before how large of a role martial arts have played in my life. One of my heroes is the master himself, Bruce Lee. His philosophies on fighting also permeate into everyday life. “Using no way as way, having no limitation as limitation,” was one of his most famous sayings. Lee’s issue with traditional martial arts was their rigidity. They were too rehearsed. There wasn’t any flexibility. He took bits and pieces from many different arts, discarding what was unnecessary and only used what he felt was practical and effective. This was a similar approach that Fischer took to chess, which is part of what made him so frightening on the board. 

When Lee says “no way as way,” he is saying that the approach we take is not a presumptuous one. We have to see what an opponent throws at us and then decide how to respond. In a fight, we can’t plan what we will do beforehand, we must adapt to the circumstance. In “having no limitation as limitation,” he is teaching us the importance of being open-minded, our beliefs and preconceptions have to get out of the way so that they do not inhibit us from seeing the bigger picture. These ideas, coupled with the chess mind, I think, can help us embrace the Black Swans that disrupt our lives.

And when we have that subtle inkling to try something outrageous we can rest in the understanding that if all fails, we can still bounce back and give it another try, or at the very least return to the tried and true path of the majority. In the end, we must do our best to embrace what unfolds before us and use our creative powers to transform it into something we can overcome.