Past a certain level you don't progress based on brainpower alone but preparation: first your general repertoire of openings, and specific openings against your opponent - because in tournaments you are notified about your opponent the day before and you can look up the games they've played in ChessBase or something. In any case your opponent will do the same against you so you come up handicapped if you skimp on preparation. Having to do actual homework is the thing that kind of disincentivized me as a teen from pursuing a potentially professional chess future and led me to do more normal studies. Now with an actual job and all that I'd hardly find the time to go up that hill again.

So you can see my habit of being distracted in the face of actual work isn't new and the advent of electronic devices was just icing on the cake.

Yeah when I was competitive blitz ratings weren't a thing and bullet was ridiculed as 'not chess', 'serious' players were all in on classical. This was before the puniest computer would utterly rout the best human, people weren't complaining about draws so much, streaming wasn't a thing...mentalities about fast-paced chess have evolved a lot since then.