visualize

I’m trying to learn how to visualize the entire chess board. If you give me a position on a board, and then I try to imagine it, it feels like someone turned off the lights. It sort of looks like a little bit if you closed your eyes, and some echo of what you were looking at was still burned into your retina, but all the detail has vanished.

Some skills just feelings like slowly lifting heavier weights, its the same action, and just gets easier with time. Some other stuff like this feels like I’m trying to develop a sixth sense, I feel like I’m staring at balls trying to make them levitate. It feels difficult enough that I’m not sure exactly where to start. I’m trying to start by memorizing the coordinates of squares and their color, but I keep leaning towards heuristics (e.g. for g6, I go to the g-file and count squares, instead of memorizing the g6 square itself). It does feel like there exist these sort of things in all my hobbies, these relatively fundamental skills that feel somewhat impenetrable. In neuro, this feels a little like math for me… I’ve sort of evaded it throughout all my PhD. In stand-up, this is probably delivery and stuff like that. I don’t even know how to start thinking about improving my delivery, I’ve just never thought about it before.