Lessons from a chess grandmaster

Fable May 9, 2025

The new Mind Master Book Club is your chance to learn secrets of strategy, success, and life with 5-time world chess champion Viswanathan "Vishy" Anand. In a recent video conversation hosted by Tech Mahindra, Vishy sat down with Fable founder Padma Warrior, talking about chess, memories, and reading. You can watch the whole conversation on YouTube!https://youtu.be/0NiAQuAA-Q0?si=RfE99yNJoV8gy_2j

Meet the grandmaster

During the video chat, the chess champion described how a book can transport the reader back to a lovely location, deepening our memory of a beloved journey."My wife and I buy one travel book from every country we visit," he explained, connecting the act of reading with the act of remembering. "It's a guilty pleasure: you can just pick it up, look at the photos, and relive the memories. You're simply enjoying memories of the trip." Whether you’re a chess player or curious to discover strategic insights about life, you’ll join conversations about sports, music, memory, success, and strategy in the Mind Master Book Club. In this free club, you can read “Mind Master: Winning Lessons from a Champion's Life” with the author himself. As members read at their own pace, Vishy curates videos, music playlists, research papers, and other resources to make the reading experience more immersive.

The benefits of keeping a journal

In the club, Vishy discussed his lifelong habit of writing in his journal — a skill he learned from his mother! “What my mother understood very profoundly was that in chess, it’s necessary to record what you saw so that you can improve, because our memories are what our brain constructs for us, not a living video of events,” he explained. “I can see what I actually thought, not what I want to remember.”Many Fable readers shared their own memories of keeping a journal inside the Mind Master Book Club. Here are a few of our favorites about how journal writing can change your life.

I've had a couple journals for over 20 years! I keep a 'happy' journal where I write down the little things that bring me joy, and then I have regular 'everything else' journals. I've always had an easier time with writing than speaking."- MelioReads

"I journal for just about anything I read. It helps me take notes on things I want to remember or be able to go back and reference to. I don't always have the best memory. I also write down my thoughts on whatever I read." - Belle_b

"Writing in a journal is the best self-care decision I've made so far. Writing down every thought and every feeling somehow helps getting things out of my brain!- Sitima

How to improve your memory

Vishy also shared advice for improving your memory, both in chess and everyday life. "If you can encode something with extra reference, like associating a chess position with a song playing in a restaurant, then even years later, hearing the song can bring the memory back instantly," he explained in the club.

"This is a takeaway that anyone can apply to their everyday life—we remember something better whenever an emotion is attached to it. This is known as emotional memory or affective memory."

One recent neuroscience study explored why emotional memories create "exceptionally stable memory patterns in the brain.” If you want to read more about emotional memory, just follow this link.

Keep reading on Fable

The Fable app is built for social reading, with tools for sharing highlights, comments, insights, links, pictures, and videos as you set measurable reading goals. We also make it easy to launch your free book club. With our platform, you can host every aspect of an online discussion at a single destination to reach readers and build safe online communities regardless of location or time zone.