I am pretty sure you know who Magnus Carlsen is. If you don’t, he is the a world chess champion and quite possibly the final boss when it comes to playing chess competitively. Statistically speaking, Carlsen is the greatest chess player of all time.
If chess is not your piece of cake, do not worry. This article is not about Magnus Carlsen or about chess. Instead, this article is about finding out if a certain brain training activity (like chess, sudoku etc.) would make you more intelligent/strategic/logical.
Despite the preformulated moves and opening theories, Chess undoubtedly is a game of logic and the five time regaining world chess champion should be the most strategic person out there. Hypothetically, if Carlsen quits chess today and decides to choose business as his regular job, would he be the best strategic businessman as well?
The short answer is probably not.
Hitting the gym and lifting weights is certainly going to help you pick groceries and other loads at ease. In a similar analogy, certain people believe that the mind is also muscle than can be trained by brain training activities that can help you get better in school, work and life. Unfortunately, that analogy is wrong and training your brain on a narrowed down task such as chess will not make you better in other aspects of life. To put it up in simpler words, a good chess position and proper business strategy don’t use the same procedures and thus don’t go hand in hand.
Two major studies show why the mind muscle memory narrative is a myth and does not work like how people believe it to be. The first major study was by Edward Thorndike, who showed practicing similar tasks didn’t have any improvement in unrelated tasks. Thorndike also went further to quote