Friday, May 16, 2025

Workplace Lessons We Can Learn from Chess

The gift of creativity, strategy, and imagination, combined with the ever-changing nature of life, keeps us learning and protects us from the alternative of an ever-unchanging mundane

National

By Daniel Walessa, Representative Intern

Over the past few years, I have become enraptured with chess, the greatest game of strategy ever created. Despite its original creation over 1,500 years ago, people today are still learning more and more about how to play through different tactics, new theories, and modern computer engines.

But even with all of these advancements in understanding, chess is so complex that it is never truly solved.

In this way, chess is similar to our lives at work. Whether you’re dealing with a difficult manager or balancing day-to-day responsibilities, your job will continue to challenge you.

This is as true for people who are entering work as it is for those who have been at the same job for 20-plus years—every day brings new challenges and opportunities that must be solved strategically.

I believe that the game of chess offers many valuable insights that can teach us how to live and work well. So, please indulge me as I bombard you with chess terms over these next few paragraphs.

To start a game of chess well, you must first play the opening moves, or “book moves.” These are the most established and theorized moves a player can make and are the best moves for all of the game’s starting positions.

This approach is how you should first start a project at work. Looking back at what your peers and mentors have taught you can be the most effective way of tackling a problem.

Common-sense solutions and strategies that worked well in the past are a great starting point to begin work. There is nothing wrong with using the conventional or standard approach, especially when others have used it to great success.

Eventually, however, every chess game will leave the opening and enter the “middlegame”: a unique position where there are no more book moves, and every option must be calculated. This is when creativity, imagination, and strategy transform chess and transport you into a new game that may have never been played before.

Should you push a pawn, develop your pieces, or simply play passively and wait for your opponent to begin the attack?

Just like chess, your work is always changing, with no day, task, or situation exactly the same as the one previous. Instead, it is up to you to use your creativity to strategize and calculate the best possible solution with the information you have.

Finally, it is all over. Your game or project has come to an end, and it is up to you to reflect on what worked and what did not.

From my own experience, this process can be quite humbling and sometimes frustrating. Seeing all your mistakes laid out in front of you by a chess engine or looking back at your work with the benefit of hindsight and finding better solutions is not exactly enjoyable.

But rather than feeling frustrated and discouraged, take these moments of reflection and appreciate them as opportunities to learn. Without making mistakes, you would never need to sit back and reflect on how you could improve. You would remain stagnant.

The gift of creativity, strategy, and imagination, combined with the ever-changing nature of life, keeps us learning and protects us from the alternative of an ever-unchanging mundane.

In many ways, chess is a lot like work: a game full of complex situations that requires common principles and strategy. But it is these qualities that keep me coming back and make the experience enjoyable.

Your work should be seen in the same way: a challenging task with many possible solutions and strategies you can deploy to succeed, and a game where you should not only strive to win, but to recognize your mistakes and use them to learn and grow.

Workplace Lessons We Can Learn from Chess

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