When solving tsumego (and, probably, during the games too, but you never know) I find it much easier to kill than to live. When the problem is 'to kill/capture' I'm finding the eye-shape ruining moves much more 'naturally' than finding eye-shape creating moves when the problem is 'to live'.

The same stands with moyos - reduction seems easier than defense. I would say invasion seems easier too, but it involves living (which is more difficult than killing, he-he).

Would be interesting to hear some thoughts on the topic.

They are often the same point.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

When I do tsumego everytime I fail a life problem, The next move I try is the move that killed me.

I feel like it's cheating hahaha.

So now I run into the problem where those are the only moves I look at and everywhere else is a blind spot.

Although they're often the same point I also find the killing tsumegos easier than the living ones. I tend to try to cut groups apart and kill them during games (not that this means I succeed ), but focus on this far more than defence so I just don't get as much practice thinking about living. I'm slowly getting the lesson beaten into me live before trying to kill though.

Moyos on the other hand I'd say I'm equally bad at both.

PeterN

Like DrStraw said, they're basically the same thing.

Killing means leaving your opponent with a shape that cannot live.
Living means creating a shape that your opponent cannot kill.

Not even to mention the tsumegos where you have to kill something to live, or you have to live with some stones to kill.

In practice, killing is much harder than living.

In tsumego, the victim is as a rule already confined, which makes it easier to kill.

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The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Even more difficult is to tell whether something is alive, dead or undecided

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If you say no, Elwood and I will come here for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of the week.

This might be true at your level, but at 5k I often found like the OP that when it came to killing I felt like the terminator, and when it came to living I felt like an ostrich with my head in the sand. Sure this was due to the emotional response to the two different situations, but what exacerbated the problem was the tendency to notice threats too late. Because this was also true for my opponents, killing was in fact often easier than living.

Then again, there is also the matter of perception: a kill is much more memorable than a failed attempt.

Not sure if this is relevant to the OP though, because the problem was occurring when doing tsumego as opposed to during games.

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Patience, grasshopper.

The Rumsfeld dilemma. Are you undecided about whether a group is undecided?

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The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Sometimes I vote for "I have no opinion"

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If you say no, Elwood and I will come here for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of the week.

Some tsumego advice I really liked (possibly from tchan001?) was to always consider either player to play in tsumego, and to assess and compare different possible paths.

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Revisiting Go - Study Journal
My Programming Blog - About the evolution of my go bot.

When I first started, I was so focused on finding the right solution for black, and completely frustrated when I had no idea then how white would respond to my attempts, that it actually never occurred to me to try to switch sides and then find the best possible move for the other side with each move.

It wasn't until I picked up James Davies' book Tesuji, that that process was explained well enough to me that I finally understood how to begin to solve life and death problems.

And I'm sure it had been explained to me before, in person, by others. But I think it was just the nearsighted focus of trying to solve for one side that blinded me from solving for the other side too. Now you get two problems for the price of one.

Of course, I'd still get lost and lose focus forgetting which side I was really trying to solve for when I have to switch sides with every other move. And doing that all in my head, early on, was just impossible.

Exactly this...

I can really relate to what you are saying, when I started out I thought that killing was easier than living problems because they are as elemental as playing inside a 3 point. Howhever now I find killing usualy a lot more difficult because you have to think about the wonderfull living tesuji's your oponent might play as a reply to your moves.

So actualy in order to be a real killer, you first have to learn to be a beautifull liver (and I did not mean the organ )

Just do more tsumego and living will get easier

Have fun!

Otenki

Sometimes when I am stumped, I think "If I were to switch sides and try to kill, where would I play?"

Of course, this doesn't help me at all because I am rubbish at killing as well.

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Poka King of the south east.