Start with Week 0

• Make an account at lichess.orgFree, nonprofit, nothing is paywalled. One catch: your username is permanent. Lichess only ever lets you change its capitalization. Pick one you'll still be happy with in a few years.
• Turn on board coordinatesEvery square has a name: columns left-to-right are lettered a to h, rows bottom-to-top are numbered 1 to 8. The square in column e, row 4 is "e4" — the first move of your repertoire. This setting prints those letters and numbers along the edge of the board so you aren't counting squares with your finger.
  
  Where: Preferences → Game display → Board coordinates → Outside the board.
  
  Why it's on this list: everything in this plan is named by square — "the f7 square", "knight lands on d5". If you can't read squares at a glance you're translating on every single puzzle.
• Learn what 15+10 means, and always use itA time control is how much clock each player gets. Run out and you lose, whatever the position. 15+10 means 15 minutes each for the whole game, plus 10 seconds added back every time you move. That second number is the increment — it's why you can't bleed out just from thinking.
  
  Where: the grid of buttons on the Lichess home page — 1+0, 3+0, 5+0, 10+0, 15+10, 30+0. Click 15+10 and it finds you an opponent. There's no setting to save; just always click that one.
  
  Why: the pre-move checklist costs about ten seconds a move. In a 3-minute game you can't afford it, so you'd guess instead — training the exact reflex we're trying to remove.
  
  Vocabulary: Lichess sorts games by length — under 3 min is Bullet, 3–8 is Blitz, 8–25 is Rapid, 25+ is Classical. You get a separate rating for each. 15+10 is Rapid, which is the rating this page asks you to record.
• Solve 25–30 puzzles without picking a categoryGo to the puzzles page and solve whatever it hands you. Take as long as you want.
  
  What this is doing: Lichess gives you a puzzle rating — a number for how good you are at tactics — and uses it to decide how hard the next puzzle should be. It takes roughly 25–30 attempts before that number means anything.
  
  Why it comes first: if you skip straight to fork puzzles in Week 1 without a settled rating, you'll get forks at random difficulty — some insultingly easy, some impossible — and the repetition won't build anything. Don't log failures yet. This is calibration, not training.
  
  Already solve puzzles regularly? Then your puzzle rating is already settled — tick this and skip the calibration solves.
• Play 4 games at 15+10Real games against real people. Play your five opening moves even when they feel wrong — that's the point of a fixed repertoire.
  
  Afterwards, ask one yes-or-no question: by move 10, had I played e4, d4, both knights out, and castled? That single question is the whole opening audit. Log the yes or no in the game log. Don't analyze deeply yet.
• Write down your two starting numbersYour rapid rating is on your profile page — click your username, top right. Your puzzle rating is on the puzzles page. Put both in the "start" boxes on the Progress page.
  
  In eight weeks it will feel like nothing has changed. Having the honest before-number is the only defence against that feeling.

Optional — below the line

• Optional but recommended: hide all ratingsPreferences → Display → Show player ratings → No. Every rating on the site disappears. You still play rated games, you just can't see the numbers.
  
  This turns "don't check your rating for three weeks" from advice you'll fail into something that isn't available to fail at. Turn it back on when you want to update the baseline.

New word? The glossary is in The Plan.