I'm fortunate to have a brilliant Muay Thai teacher and accomplished fighter who preaches this kind of philosophy every class. No matter what you do, you should do it mindfully and in the case of fighting, be aware of trade-offs and price you pay for technical inadequacy. Far too many people have the misconception that fighting or training is about hitting hard, when it's really more about hitting correctly. Parallel to the chess example: if you're getting hit and you don't know why or how, you're not training correctly. You're not studying and identifying your mistakes and then improving on them.
Having an excellent teacher to see and explain those things puts you at such an advantage over someone stuck with a less experienced or educated teacher. I like to think that theses lessons can help carry over into the startup world. That is (in sum), technical execution and winning are the only things that matter.
Oh absolutely. Having a great teacher really accelerates the process. I've been lucky enough to have studied with many great teachers over the years, and this is a common thread I've noticed. I've also noticed that really high-level skills tend to run in "family lines." For instance, my piano teacher can trace her own lineage through Artur Schnabel (one of the greatest pianists of all time), Theodor Lechitizky, and all the way back to Bach.
It's unfortunate (or perhaps a blessing in disguise) that there's no real "Teacher/Student" analogue for CS. On the other hand, the Programming/CS community is far more open about sharing information than some of the other communities I've been in. The piano community for instance is in general somewhat secretive. Ideas about piano playing seem to be passed down from generation to generation. Near the top, the techniques for obtaining "excellent playing" seem to be well agreed upon. As we get closer to the bottom, lots of misconceptions and disagreements seem to surface.
In the programming community, while there are obvious camps, since information is available so much more freely it's vastly easier to make informed decisions about what's stupid and what's not.
There may not be a strict "Teacher/Student" analogue for CS, but it is such a young discipline that I would imagine it would be pretty easy to trace a "lineage" for everyone back to certain branching events or influencers.
Having an excellent teacher to see and explain those things puts you at such an advantage over someone stuck with a less experienced or educated teacher. I like to think that theses lessons can help carry over into the startup world. That is (in sum), technical execution and winning are the only things that matter.