[nescioquid]

I found that bit of advice similarly daunting. However, in trying to understand where things go wrong in a game, you might notice patterns emerging after you've analyzed several of your own games, which should give you something concrete to work on for improvement.

At my level, that basically amounted to identifying blind spots I'm a prey to (at one point it was discovered attacks along a particular diagonal). A master, expert, or higher level class player will be concerned with entirely different things when they review their games.

[webnrrd2k]

One thing that helps me is to play a better chess engine, dialed down to close to my skill level, and play for a bit until I really get stuck. Then I take back a bunch of moves and figure out where I went wrong and why, and then play the game out until I get stuck again. Or I'll go back and try to see if I can find a better way to accomplish my goals. In general, creating a low-risk environment to learn, where I try to compare my original thinking to my later thinking has been key.

I haven't played more than a handful of games since pre-covid times, so I'm back to being pretty clumsy, and just started "rewinding" games again. It seems to help a lot.

[webnrrd2k]

I forgot to add that simply writing down the moves when I play someone else makes a huge difference in my play. I'm much less likely to blunder, for one thing.