Saturday Strategy Sessions

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Today at a Glance

Question: What if the thing you're best at is the thing that's killing you?

Quote: "I became separated from my love; I became alienated from chess... The need to win all the time, as opposed to the freedom to explore the art." - Josh Waitzkin

Tool: The "Making Smaller Circles" method that turns specialists into serial masters

Question on What Success Really Means

What if the thing you're best at is the thing that's killing you?

Josh Waitzkin was 23 when he walked away from chess forever.

Eight national championships. International Master rating. Hollywood movie about his childhood. Garry Kasparov writing forewords for his books. Everything a chess player dreams of achieving.

His next move was obvious. Push for Grandmaster. Join the elite circuit. Maybe world champion by 35.

Instead, he quit.

Not because he was losing. Not because he'd peaked. But because of what chess had become to him.

"I became separated from my love; I became alienated from chess," he explained years later. "The need that I felt to win, to win, to win all the time, as opposed to the freedom to explore the art more and more deeply."

He looked at the chess world ahead of him—players who'd given their entire lives to 64 squares—and realized he was looking at his future. Brilliant minds, but trapped in one game. Unable to see the world except through chess patterns.

Chess had stopped being something he did. It had become everything he was. And that terrified him.

So this 23-year-old chess genius enrolled in beginner's Tai Chi classes. Picture it: Someone who could see 20 moves ahead, standing with retirees in a community center, unable to coordinate breathing with hand movements.

Everyone thought he'd lost his mind.

Five years later, he won the Push Hands World Championship in Taiwan. Two gold medals.

Then Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Black belt under Marcelo Garcia.

Then coaching. Now hedge fund managers and the Boston Celtics hire him to teach peak performance.

But here's what everyone missed: He didn't succeed despite quitting chess. He succeeded because of it.