Another update: I've convinced one of my friends to play in a Swiss-style live tournament in a city by me 2 weekends from now. We're gonna get demoed but hopefully it inspires me to work harder on my game.
I'm having a tough time with getting a routine going. Every sport you have some sort of routine or visulization technique you do before doing certain tasks (e.g. before swinging a golf club) - but with chess I don't have one. I need to develop something where I look at the board and go through a quick list of stuff like:
1. any immediate threats of mate?
2. any hanging pieces for either of us?
3. etc...
What do you guys do before playing a move?
My next big focus is going to be on pawn structures and how they actually work. I'm very ignorant about them, and it's definitely costing me in almost every stage of the game.
Oh, and missing simple tactics like this when crunched for time
FU chess