There is one guaranteed way to get better at chess.
Once you’ve decided on your move, but before you’ve made it, you should: 1) identify the next best move available to you, and 2) justify why the original move is better.
This process can help us uncover a better move that we may have missed, and ensures we don’t default to the first, obvious, or easy solution.
Unsurprisingly, this method can also be used to improve general decision making.
Although we make thousands of decisions every day, most of them don’t require complex analysis or thinking. However, for important decisions, using this process gives us pause, allows us to explore alternatives, and ultimately increases our confidence in the decision.