Step 1.5

Choose openings where you have to make maneuvers and waiting moves that seem somewhat artificial to you on your current level, just to stay alive out of the opening. Learn them by heart as "something you just have to do in this opening", i.e. "in this opening I always put my king on c8". Be satisfied with this kind of knowledge - don't dig deeper. Apply them automatically in your games. Even if your opponents deviates from mainlines. Putting that king on c8 is part of what it means to play this opening, and a goal in itself.  And if you do, then the "logic of the position is in your favour".

Dink Heckler wrote on 04/24/18 at 12:11:19:
But life is never that easy. A really hard intellectual puzzle is also a battle of wills--you with yourself.

Meanwhile,

Step 5a: Make assumptions about yourself. You are a tactician or a positional player. You cannot be both. If you are a tactician, know that if you don't force complications, however dubious, you will be slowly suffocated--starting now. If you are a positional player, know that you are incapable of adequately analyzing sharp positions--so don't try.  

Corollary 5a1: If you are the lower-rated player, your cause is hopeless. If you are the higher-rated player, your game will win itself. 

Hi.

Fun stuff. Additions ok?

Bancrates wrote on 04/24/18 at 10:19:08:

Step 5: If you decide to prepare for specific opponents: make sure it's really late at night and eat some kind of junk food while at it. Chances are this will both make you less rested the following day and less able to take in anything nutritious before the game. Also. Only look at the older games your opponent has in the database. This way you will have prioritised your preparation time.

Bancrates wrote on 04/24/18 at 10:19:08:

Step 5.5
Don't bother about writing down every single move on your scoresheet. At some point you will probably be forced to fill in the moves you missed, although quite often this happens closer towards the time control. If you still have time left by that point, wasting a few minutes frantically filling in your scoresheet could be a worthwile excercise.

Bancrates wrote on 04/24/18 at 10:19:08:

Immediately check how much elo you lost or (in some rare cases) won. Make sure to end the tournament only with a modest minus of perhaps 10-20 points (irregardless of number of rounds). This way you will go down in rating slowly, meaning it takes longer before you have to play even worse to underperform.

Have a nice day.

Step 7a: treat the stirrings of counterplay with disdain because 'the logic of the position is in your favour'. Five moves later, spend most of your remaining time trying desperately to deal with said counterplay, which is now threatening to swamp your King.

This is basically my chess career in a nutshell; well played! I guess this is what happens when you treat chess as an intellectual puzzle rather than a battle of wills.

Chapter 1 - Study and Preparation

Step 1: Pick a highly theoretical opening repertoire that you don't have time to learn/maintain.

Step 2: Start reading a lot of chess books, but finish very few. Try to read them all in your head as well, because playing the moves out on an actual board is an inconvenience.

Step 3: Think that doing lots and lots of tactics problems will automatically make you a stronger player.

Step 4: Play as much bullet chess as you can to "practice tactics".

Chapter 2: During a Game

Step 5: Make assumptions about your opponent based on their appearance/age etc

Step 6: Spend far too much time on moves 8-16. Your opponent has inevitably deviated by this point and it is your duty to punish his inaccurate moves mercilessly by calculation of extensive variations in non-forcing positions. 

Step 7: Find yourself in a decent-but-not-crushing position by move 17, but seriously behind on the clock. At this point, start beating yourself up about your dreadful time management, and consider switching to a flank opening. Feel hot and flustered. Consider the best moves in the position, but disregard them because of some potential tactical reply that worries you because it "looks threatening" despite the fact that you haven't calculated it. Instead start going for moves that "look right" and "feel safe". 

Step 8: It should now be about move 25, and you may or may not still be ahead on the board, but you will have recovered a little on the clock relative to your opponent. At this point - and this is the critical step - you must go in for a series of exchanges towards an equal endgame, preferably blitzing them out without checking any tactical possibilities at all. This will inevitably lead to a lost position.

Step 9. Resign prematurely in disgust at yourself.

Chapter 3: After the game

Step 10: Analyse only with a computer, justify resignation at -2 by the fact that you can't draw the position against Fritz.

Step 11: Beat yourself up even more about it, applying more pressure.

Step 12: Consider online poker instead. It's more suited to your temperament.