By this point, I've coached a lot of students. And I'd say I've learned as much from them as they have from me.

One such student, Jessika, has shown me a technique she created that addresses a core sticking point in conceptualization training. I gave her technique to a few other students, and their results have been more than encouraging.

So much so that I'm making this technique a core recommendation to all students.

Like all the best ideas, it's simple. It seems obvious once you know it.

In my coaching work with any student, it's important to me that we get results. Whatever our target is, I want to make meaningful progress toward it. Otherwise they're wasting money and I'm wasting time.

Sometimes a lack of progress indicates that I'm guiding the student the wrong way. In that case, we step back, reassess the plan, and change our approach.

Sometimes it comes down to whether or not the student is putting the work in between our sessions. Life gets in the way, sure — we're adults after all — but the intention and the effort need to be there.

The students who put the work in, improve. Often quickly.

Jessika was improving very quickly.

We'd identify our next area of focus. Vacated squares, say. We'd put together a plan for how we'd address them. And just a week later, in our very next session, she came back with the kind of skills I normally budget 3 to 4 sessions of work to reach.

It wasn't an outlier either. She did it to vacated squares, then dormant ideas, then calculation awareness.

Each idea flowed from our discussions into her skills and her games smoothly, with no delay and little frustration.

Now, Jessika's clever, and a world-class instructor in her own right. She knows what it takes to improve in a skill, and how to approach it in a way that works for her.

(She's a clarinet mentor for the ambitious and determined. If that sounds like something you're interested in, you can learn more about Jessika's work here.)

But I suspected her cleverness and experience weren't the only reasons for the speed she picked stuff up.

At the end of the year, after Jessika's excellent tournament performances, some good rating gain, and a game where she pushed a player rated 600 points above her to the edge, we sat down to review the year that was.

My main goal was to work out what exactly she was doing that could cause such efficient skill acquisition. To see if it was something I could teach others.

In our discussions, we mapped out the work she does on her Chess. Conceptualization and otherwise.

She did all the things I recommend. Started each session with at least a few minutes of blindfold work, practiced vacated square awareness in her puzzle and tactics work, completed the full Five Sentence exercise with several games.

But there was something she was doing that I hadn't recommended. That no one had recommended to her. But that she just felt would be a useful thing to do.

It's a game review technique. And I think it's the critical and most replicable bit of why Jessika's in-game awareness rises so quickly.

Most game review techniques are designed to help us understand what happened in the game. Where the critical moments are, what the best moves were, where we made strategic errors or oversights. Important stuff.

Jessika's Review isn't about that stuff at all.

Jessika's Review isn't about what happened in the game. It's about building the habits you'd like to have in your games.

Here's how it works.

First, pick a game you've played recently that you haven't analyzed with an engine yet. Engine analysis will taint your sense of the game too much. We want this review to be as fresh as possible.

Second, pick one awareness habit you'd like to develop. It could be checking for vacated squares, or dormant ideas, or even a more traditional Chess idea like "checks, captures, attacks" or a blunder check. You'll find the benefits faster if you keep your focus on just one habit at a time.

Third, go through the game and perform your chosen habit on every move.

That's it. Super simple.

When Jessika told me about this technique, I knew I had found the answer.

The hardest part of building any new kind of awareness in Chess is showing your brain it's worth spending energy on in-game.

We may have every intention of checking the vacated squares before we play our moves, but as soon as the pressure ramps up we stop doing it.

Until our brains learn to automatically notice these things, we have to use self-control to make it happen. Self-control takes working memory slots, and our brains will prioritize other things if space gets tight.

We can't rely on self-control when the pressure kicks in. The faster we can make it automatic, the better.

And there's one proven way to make something automatic: do it a bunch.

You need reps. And Jessika's Review gives you those reps.

When you review a 50-move game, you give your brain 50 reps of exactly the habit you'd like to have in your next game.

As you work through a Jessika's Review, you'll notice a few moments that your chosen habit would have helped you out. Opportunities or threats you overlooked but that you would have picked up if this habit had already been solid. You'll feel a little pain in that, and a little excitement too. Both are useful emotions that help with habit formation.

You're getting reps, you're getting emotional reinforcement, and it's all within the context of your own game, your own positions. You're building the habits in exactly the context you'll use the habits.

With all of that backing you up, your brain will get the message.

To get the most out of Jessika's Review, make sure you do it first. Before you turn on the engine, even before you share the game with a coach. External feedback will shape your thinking before you can earn the awareness for yourself. You can't unsee an eval bar.

Now, this is in no way a replacement for standard game analysis techniques. It's important to review what happened in your games. My friend GM Noël Studer has an excellent video on how to get the most out of your game analysis with minimal stuffing around.

Jessika's Review is a layer that goes beforehand. It's about what you want to happen next time. It's about practicing the kind of player you want to be.

It's early days on this technique. I'm still gathering data, researching what's going on. But Jessika has found great success with it, and the students who have followed her lead are finding their awareness rising quickly.

If you decide to try this technique, reach out and let me know how it's going after a little while.

The best ideas in this community don't always start with me. Sometimes, quite often I'd say, the best ideas come from you. Today, they came from Jessika.

So thanks, Jessika. And thanks to you, too.

I love what we're building here.

Here's to the journey,
Aiden