Studying Chess Made Easy - Accounting for Time

Studying Chess Made Easy happens to be a book I read from cover to cover not too long ago. It is by Andrew Soltis. The reality is that my last post, or the first post of this blog was in January of 2021. The question I have today, July 2022 (7/22/2022) is what I have done with my time since then. its been over a year and 7 months. Today coincidentally I purchased a calendar. The idea is to account for time. Am I doing better than I was on 2021? well in certain ways I am. I have purchased a number of books since then as well. A week ago I got a job at Panera Bread. It will be a part time job for me so 20, 25, or 30 hours a week. The situation at the moment is that I am waiting on my current manager to release the schedule for me on the 26th or 27th of this month. It will essentially let me know what my first day of work will be at Panera. The job is everything and nothing in a way. It is everything because I will use all the money I save from there to invest into chess. I can travel to many tournaments, I can invest in books, software, better pieces to study more, or even a super computer (128 core computer) to study and sell chess analysis. so in that way it is everything. really, the saving for the traveling is a lot. it might be the sole purpose of the job in my opinion. in other words why I stay there and what will keep me motivated going week after week. the job could be nothing because I am losing all that focus time and not devoting it to the game. However without the job I will never be able to afford playing. so in essence, I work to travel now, which is not that bad. So for the moment, the most important thing will be for me to get my first schedule from Panera, and perform there well. I dont have problems making it to work or keeping to a schedule, I have always been good with work and schedules, I worked for walmart not too long ago and also subway and I performed well on the job. my managers were happy so I believe I will do well at Panera. The calendar. well the calendar is a new tool I am adding to my books, sets, among other things in my chess studying toolbox. The calendar will be used to account for time. I will have it on my desk or next to my journal, and x out days that go by. this way I start embodying what time feels like as it goes by and I begin creating projects, and assignments, as well as goals, and tasks which I need to complete to keep moving forward. I am 36. I will be 37 in October. In 3 years, I will be 40. I was doing some thinking today on the chess and everything, and I came to the realization that sometimes it can be bad for you. or in other words counter productive or just plain bad. I was looking at how much you have to do to perform at a certain level and its a ridiculous amount of work. it look unhealthy. however if you take other things into consideration and see it from a different perspective, for instance, suppose I were a 2500 GM today and playing in active tournaments. I see the work that I have to do today as a 2300 player as the work I would be doing as a 2500 player to stay alive and in form, or in shape. having said that when you see the amount of work you can get the impression that its unhealthy. its a considerable amount. Can I be GM by 49? or by 50? there would be certain tasks I would need to complete. one is reading everything I have on the endgame, in other words, mastering the endgame. the amount of work is basically finishing off the encyclopedias from sahovski on the endgames. among some other small books here or there. thats a considerable amount of work. that can take anywhere from 3 to 5 years. Then I would need to create an opening repertoire, and research it. publish the research to notebooks,and commit the notebooks to memory. theres a considerable amount of work to do on the opening. then there is the praxis portion of chess. in other words how much i need to play to continuosly improve. also to perform, in other words you play live, over the board, or in person to perform and increase your rankings/ratings. this is another aspect. you also play a lot online, and practice games, aswell as small tournaments locally, to improve your game. then there might be some calculation training i might need to do. the idea is that calculation is the biggest skill a chess player has to master. by working on my calculation I might for instance, skip certain parts of my current preparation. for instance its possible to say that you will work on calculation to skip 3 to 5 years of endgame work. now to me, its all work that you do to win games at home, so I see it as just pending work. however to explain or powerful calculation is, you can very likely just work on that one skill together with openings, and your golden. I guess i would also read literature in the process. the most important thing so far for me, is to get the panera job. start saving, and begin studying on my extra time at home. the job is really close to my home so there are no problems there, and as soon as I get back I move on to reading and working on other parts of my chess. a good goal or task would be to see how much I can do from here to 40. If I can read the majority of my books, and finish the endgame work that would be ideal. a friend of mine gave me the idea of taking 10 lesson packages of chess lessons per chess coach until i find the one that can turn me into GM. I think its hard to find those but I am sure someone in the world should exist that might be able to do it. or at the very least each will have something to share that will be useful. this is something i can consider in the process.