Recently, my friend came back to town for the Easter holiday weekend.  I haven’t seen him in over a year, so naturally, I had to hit my boy up and see how he’s doing.  After work decided to pay him a visit to see how he was doing.  As I arrived at his parents’ house (where he was staying), I saw playing chess against our homegirl.  I’ve always been interested in playing chess, but I was unaware of anyone (in my circle) who played it (until recently).  Wanting to feed my curiosity on the game, I ask to play the winner (our homegirl).

My homegirl, knowing that I’m new to the game, gave me the rundown on it. She described how each piece has their own movements, attacks,  and the best way to make moves with the pieces. Finally, she ended with the most important detail of chess: planning ahead for the long game. In short, she taught me how chess is about making strategies in your head often; being aware of the risks and rewards that lie beyond.

During her explanation, I realized how chess is like planning my next moves (in terms of brand building, vlogging, blogging, etc.) and looking beyond the moment.   You don’t simply move without logic.  You must not only plan all the way to the end but adapt to changes as well.

Chess is a game of patience and long-term planning – similar to brand building.

When building your brand, business, etc., you need to plan things out.  If you don’t, you will be overwhelmed with stress and problems.  Planning for the long game takes time, thoughts, energy, and effort.  You must craft a plan for each project – for each move.  There are no excuses.

Say my first move is to write a review on Kokkou.  My plan is to make time to watch 12, 23 minutes of the series (6 hours or so) once without taking notes.  My second move will be to watch it again while writing notes on character devolvement, scriptwriting, animation, etc. Following that, I’ll take out the details in my writing that aren’t important, logically, etc. Once those are tackled, I start writing the first three drafts of my review until I hit my final draft.  During this time, I make a schedule for this writing project with a deadline.  This way, my review for the anime comes out in time while it’s still fresh in the fans mind.

 

My long game plan on writing anime reviews or analysis also includes my regular 9-to-5 schedule/plans.  Let’s say I have to go in to work at 11.  The night before, I take about one hour (10PM-11PM) to add content to my review before I go to sleep for about 6 hours (11PM-5AM).  From 5AM-7AM, I just continue to write from where  I left off the night before. From 7AM-7:45AM, I prep and eat a protein heavy breakfast.  After that, I take a shower and once I’m done with that, it’s back to writing until I have to leave to work (I’m in my work clothes by then so there’s no delay or making myself late for work as I’m working on a project).

Repeat until success.

To conclude, you gotta plan for the long game with your projects.  It will help you out.  You need to set up your plan with logic, and not be ruled by your heart.  Attacking a project without a plan will destroy you.  It is foolish not to plan things you.

(Note: I have yet to watch Kokkou.  Do not wait for me for a review for it.)