Analysis Paralysis

One consistent advice that I have heard uniformly across various podcasts and videos is this: play slower games, and analyze your games.

For the longest time I never used to analyze my games. Even today, I would say that a large percentage of my online games (which comprises mostly of Blitz ) remain unanalyzed. But that said, I analyze all my slow games, i.e. anything above 15-10 or any OTB classical games. Even in Blitz if there was an interesting position which either me or my opponent made a mistake will get analyzed.

But there was a time when I wouldn't even bother analyzing any game. Especially losses. Losses were the hardest to analyze. Why would I want to replay these moves where I had done silly things to lose a winning position? Or what would I gain to understand the game when I know I lost because of a blunder? At the core of it all though was just an instinctive feeling to reject analysis due to the feelings surfacing from a loss.

But once I consistently the heard the advice about analyzing my games, I faced the next hurdle.

How should I analyze my game?

Should I use the engine? Should I not use the engine first, and then use the engine? Should I annotate my thoughts as they were happening? In my mind there was a perfect way to analyze games, and I had to figure that out first before attempting the exercise.

The result: no games were analyzed.

There is a saying which goes like: if something is worth doing, it's worth doing poorly. If you want to exercise, it's better to do something small and sustainable like going for a 15 minute jog, rather than first figuring out your perfect gym workout schedule. Lot of the times you won't even know what works and won't work, until you take the first plunge.

The same principle applies to analysis. Just do some. If your current analysis routine is non-existent, then doing something imperfect is better than not doing anything. It doesn't matter if you use the engine or not, if you annotate every move or not, or if you only look at the highlights of your game.

The key is that you look over the moves, and see if you can take any lessons from it. Maybe there are no lessons. But that's okay.

My current analysis routine involves:

1. Looking at the moves with the engine.
2. Stopping at key positions where I felt that I missed either a defensive or attacking idea, and see what moves were possible.
3. Taking screenshots of critical positions that resulted in a missed tactic or missed defensive idea from me. These screenshots get put in an Anki study that I review from time to time.
4. Similarly I will take a screenshot of an opening sequence where I made an incorrect move or failed to capitalize on my opponent's mistake. These will go in the Anki study as well.

It isn't perfect, and I don't always remember to do all of the above things. But it has helped me. And you should figure out what works for you.