How can chess and the skills associated with it be transferred to other areas of life?

Well, these are basically all things you do at chess itself, practically these things are for all kinds of life. However, chess is a rather specific activity. As an example:

For example, if you play classic chess, you will practice to focus over longer periods of time. This can be advantageous in all possible areas of life – however chess is not necessarily the best way to practice to concentrate over long periods of time. It is more a practical side effect.

If you play a lot of flash chess, for example, you practice time management because you will get a good feeling for how long 3 or 5 minutes (depending on which format you are playing). But this is also an ability that can also be acquired in many other areas of life, always if you have to do something regularly in a constant period of time.

I could imagine that chess, that is, in particular, the translation of different positions, also has a positive effect on spatial thinking, particularly with regard to imagination (where I have no study that has occupied it now).

Basically, these are many small things that could be helpful in countless areas of life. But it’s not like they give you a gigantic advantage, but rather just a marginal advantage. And specific areas of life where you can call the help is also less sensible.

So just as an example: if you can concentrate longer by chess, this could help you to read complex literature. Here too, you have to concentrate for a long time. But someone who, instead of playing chess, often reads longer books will still be better at the end than you – just because you can only transfer chess to a limited extent, where the frequent reading of books can be transferred relative 1:1 to the reading of complex literature.

Areas like strategic thinking are also such a case: Yes, you learn to think strategically at chess, but primary in terms of chess. Possibly, there are still a few board games to be transferred to, but chess will not help you to make strategic decisions when running a company. Again, what you do is now relatively specific.

Better than to ask which areas this can be transferred, it is more likely to think about how you play chess, and what you are doing in concrete terms. Perhaps you will discover a little bit easier in one or the other living area here or there because of your shaft drainage.

But as I said, this is not just about chess, but basically with all things you do in life. Perhaps an example of me from a completely different area: I drive the longest time of my life skateboard, and one of the many side effects is that you often crash. And that’s why I’ve become relatively good in falling without hurting me. This will certainly come to me in some form if I slip out in the bathroom or stumble over the last step – not that I don’t hurt at all, but maybe less bad. Nevertheless, this doesn’t make me a born stuntman, and my skills are best just to crash from the skateboard because it’s just what I’ve been doing.

But simply quite flat to say “Who plays good chess can automatically also be good XYZ” is not really scientific, and barely practicable – especially when we talk about life areas that are always removed from the nature of chess game, because the transitions are logically becoming smaller and smaller.

So with regard to the actual question:

• What kind of reflections are these and what are these practical for?

What these are for “reflexes” also depends on how you play chess, but concentration, pattern recognition and time management are aspects that come directly to me and are certainly always in some form. If you play a lot on the board, especially flash or bullet, hand-eye coordination might also be an aspect. (especially with regard to small things quickly grasp ind precise – whether this form of hand-eye coordination, for example helping to catch a ball is questionable)

What these skills are practical is hard to say. Basically, for everything you do, or anything where you notice certain similarities. But you can’t say it on a flat-rate basis. There are already tens of thousands of activities in which concentration is helpful, and transferability will not be the same everywhere. That would blow the frame of the question. With this comment alone, I am already at the top of the possible shows.