kephalos
If it were useless we would see at least some populations in the world to have lost it altogether.
I imagine it to be like 2 bottles of water and 3 bottles of oil or something (with bottles of 1 liter), or a 1 gallon jug.
I remember reading about a German TV host who lost weight and every week would fill up the total weight lost as water in two buckets and walk around the house with them just to get a feeling for the weight.
Use rated games to be matched with real players. After a few games that you will lose you will be matched with players against which you have roughly a 50:50 chance of winning / losing. Don’t focus on the ELO rating specifically at the start. Playing against humans is definitely different from the computer. In the lower ELO ranges you will see a lot of moves that don’t make sense and that the chess engine would never play. On the other hand opponents can be quite good at reading your strategy (as opposed to a dumbed-down engine).
Use the Analyse game function after the game to get an idea of the mistakes you made.
I would start with 10 minute games so that you can play a few games in a row (gives you more practice) but still have time to think.
It kind of seems they stole a decade off of Lasker.