Creating a Chess Study Plan

In order to improve my chess I need to spend time each week studying the various aspects of chess. It is difficult for me to spend more than an hour a day in my improvement process so I will allocate 7 hours a week for chess improvement. My chess plan can be found in the table at the end of the post.

It is possible I may have more time on some weeks and less time on others. By improving across a large number of areas, I will shore up my weaknesses and improve my strengths. A lot of Amateurs spend a lot of time studying openings which stunts their growth. Learning a little bit about openings is important but spending a lot of time on them is not constructive. The most important areas to spend time on is Tactics, Studying Master Games and Studying your own games after playing them. What good does learning every opening in MCO if you never use it or are lost once you get there.

If you have your own chess study plan please post in the comments so we can compare. I would love to figure out how to improve mine.

I will follow up with posts on how I am studying the various areas, what tools and materials I am using and how to measure progress if possible.

7 hours a week

Time to Spend	Activity	Why is this activity important
1/2 hour	Opening Study	Slowly growing my opening Repertoire
1 1/2 hours	Tactics	Improving chess tactics will be biggest factor for improvement
1/2 hour	Middle Game Study	Learn how to get to positions where tactics will help win games
1/2 hour	Endgame Study	Win won games, draw seemingly lost ones
1 hour	Master Game Study	Studying masters games will help me in all areas of chess. I will see the kind of openings they play, tactics they use and plans they develop.
2 hours	Play Games	If I don't practice what I learn I will forget it.
1 hour	Review Games	Learning from ones own mistakes is a requirement to improving in chess.