Easing back into using CFOP | APB: polishing off LXS

Hello! I am finally back. As I mentioned, I stopped updating for those 3 weeks because I didn't have much to talk about, and I didn't have much motivation. As I also said, I got burnt out from alg learning and completely lost my momentum, which sprouted into unhealthy and obsessive gaming... Alas, not much I can do but move forward and work on myself.


CFOP:

I was barely ever cubing, so I didn't spend time on this at all, of course, it's my fault for not balancing my focus though.

Also, the schedule isn't working out, so I'm changing it from "each day focuses on a different step", to "focus on 1 step from each method over the entire week". This week, for CFOP, I will just do some relaxed solving to ease myself back into solving with it.


2^4 Presentation:

This is a huge relief to finally be done with. There's a lot of lessons to be learnt from this, but I doubt I can extract them all. I'll try my best though.

The structure was a big thing I had to change after the mock-presentation with my parents. Previously the presentation was an incoherent mess of random demonstrated facts that barely strung together. I got the suggestion to follow the presentation structure of "This is what I'm going to talk about. The actual presentation. This is what I just told you about.", and while adding that I looked at the structure in general, as well as the order of explanations, and revised it to make it into a cohesive lesson that fed into itself. This isn't really a mistake, per se, but it's good experience for me to keep in mind. (I swapped the order of this and the following paragraph to make it flow better, so I'm already putting it into practice!)

While trying to sum up the presentation, I realised I was very confused about what I was actually trying to do with it. Explain the fourth dimension in its entirety? (Which would be accompanied by extensive learning about it.) Generally explain the cube? Something else? That was mistake number 1. I should have had a clear idea of what I wanted to do. After doing the mock presentation with my parents, and listening to their criticism, I realised I should focus mainly on intuitively explaining the cubes 4D-ness and why it looks how it does. I had to cut out quite a bit of fat, like how the cube is put together and the components of the pieces. I also realised my scope was too large: Once again, I'm not quite sure what I wanted to do, but it definitely somewhat aligned with "Learn and explain the fourth dimension and the puzzle in its near entirety, within a 15 minute presentation.", which was foolish.

Another obvious mistake is not doing it sooner. I had to rush to edit and adjust the presentation, because I did the mock-presentation the night before the real one. I should've started this project months ago, instead of procrastinating. Although, this is a more general issue with myself rather than a specific mistake.

In the end, I'm happy with how it turned out. It starts by going over 3x3x3, 2x2x2, and 4x4x4, explaining essential facts about these puzzles that helps explain the 2^4. I then reveal the 2^4, in all it's mystique, and actually start to explain it, beginning with what it actually is, proceeding to explain the fourth dimension, relating it to the virtual version, then ending off with an explanation of the transformation from 1D to 4D, which clarifies the visuals of the virtual and physical puzzle. I'm proud of the start in particular, since I feel like it provides a good basis of understanding to work with. (If anyone here cares to see what I actually wrote send me a DM and I can send it over!)

I believe the audience was interested enough and enjoyed it. Quite a few people said it was interesting, but, in particular, there was one person there who's into maths, and he seemed very pleased by the topic. He added a piece of information at the end about how, if a 2D being were to come across a 3D dent in their world, they would supposedly perceive it as the distance from the start and end of the gap being longer, which is mind-boggling... from that I realised I forgot to make comparisons between a 2D being trying to comprehend a 3D world and a 3D being trying to comprehend a 4D world, since those comparisons help quite a lot, but I think it's fine I omitted them.

I'm very pleased to be finally done with this project, it felt like it was almost "blocking up" my life, and I didn't want to start any other projects because of it. From now on, I want to focus on a project that involves more creative expression. (Perhaps making a youtube video would be fun?)


APB:

The way this went is very unfortunate. Trying to drill an algset roughly 3-4 times a day, coupled with trying to drill previous algs, is — at least personally — very exhausting. Of course, this hiatus being so long is absolutely on me. Something of note is that I wait to enact plans until after I've actually made a post here, making this a sort of anchor point... which is strange, and generally waiting for the perfect moment seems to be a big issue with the way I operate.

Trying to go back into learning LXS is pretty difficult, since I want to re-drill all those previous algs, in hopes of ensuring they're properly learnt, but it's just soooo arduous and boring to do. Perhaps I should ignore previous algs for now, and just properly learn all the corner in slot algsets. Advice would be appreciated.

1 thing I don't get is how alg learning comes so naturally to people. I feel like I'm incompetent for struggling so much and learning at such a slow pace, but I guess that's just how I am.

Properly learnt LXS algs: like... 60? Half learnt: 110.



During the burnout, I obsessively gamed and struggled to put it down, while struggling to pick up a book or cube. Both of those patterns have been quite consistent. This has a few potential indications, but the most glaring one is addiction... I'd champion myself good at dealing with these sorts of things, given it gets to a certain point, so I'm putting a couple of restrictions in place (2 hours maximum gaming, no more than an hour of it before taking care of other priorities). Obviously the hope is that these'll be enough to engage with my hobbies more healthily.

I'm also always trying new methods to better make use of my time, and last night I thought up a few promising ones, so perhaps that'll help with procrastination. But it's hard to tell on the first day of trying them out, so it's uncertain.

Feels great to finally make an update after so long. It surprisingly took me assorted time throughout the entire day to actually finish the post, so I might not be in the flow of writing once again just yet, but thats OK. See you, hopefully for real, next week.

Hello, yet again! This week feels like it's gone in a flash, but yet I still did quite a bit so I think it went well.


CFOP:

I think, in general, I'm spending a lot less time cubing compared to before I burnt out on alg learning; I did do some solves, though, so I didn't fail my goal, per se.


APB:

I've been doing assorted untimed (and occasionally timed) APB solves throughout the week (like usual). These have helped strengthen some LXS algs, and pick back up some algs I had half-forgotten.

Alongside those solves, I've been drilling the corner in slot algsets, and I'm pretty confident with them now. I was taking these algs very slowly, simply drilling every alg once a day. It was slow but very relaxed, and it's definitely led to a very solid memorisation.

I'm going to move on to UFR now. I may continue on with the same relaxed learning-style, or perhaps I'll pickup the pace, but I'm leaning towards the relaxed option.



I disregarded my rules and spent a LOT of time gaming on the first 2 days after last weeks update, so I decided to say absolutely no gaming the next 2 days. On the second day (Tuesday), it was pretty late and I had done plenty reading and cubing, so I opted to play a bit, cutting my "no gaming" period short, but ultimately I think no harm came from it. I've been doing quite good since then, and have been properly engaging with other hobbies, as well as prioritising socialisation and other priorities.

I'm also adding a new rule that I've been, for the most part, following this week, which is "no gaming during car rides" (unless contextually appropriate), this is because often-times I would miss out on super good reading time, and after the car ride, when home, it's very easy to say "another half an hour of gaming couldn't hurt"...

Update on the "methods to make better use of my time": One of those methods is sorting activities into categories, and requiring I adequately engage with each category. I've found this system quite useful and easy to measure. A different method was trying to take the perspective of "what would best serve me immediately" when trying to decide what to do. That one has proved a bit less helpful, since you have to be constantly making effort to keep it in mind. Still a useful tool.

Slightly shorter update, but I'm very happy with the current state of my "productivity"! Only things I'd change would be more cubing, and putting time into some creative project, as I mentioned last week.

"Hey!" is getting really old...


CFOP:

I didn't really do any solves, but, I'm going on a 2 night road trip tomorrow, so I'll try cube more in general, especially so for CFOP. More on that soon.


APB:

I ended up skipping quite a few days of drilling. UFR is in a good-ish state, but it's not great. I'll probably do 3 or so more days of UFR while simultaneously moving onto RFU. It's crazy how long-winded this has become due to my poor decision making...




So, the road trip. It's not really a sight-seeing road trip. It is — for the most part — to avoid flight tickets, so I'll be doing next to nothing in a cramped space for most of it. Due to the repetitiveness of being in a car, I foretell I'll need to ensure a decent level of variety to avoid feeling awful & bored. Which means, ideally, more cubing than usual! To tack onto that, despite the need for variety, it's probably a harder scenario to ensure I probably manage my time in, so It'll be a bit of a "test", if you will. Anyway, the road trip is promising, and I'll to my best to capitalise on it. We'll both see how it goes soon.


Deltarune (a game) ended up utterly absorbing and derailing my life for the past 2 days — just like usual, when I play updates from it. I've now finished all the new content so I'm back to normal. I honestly don't want to call this a mistake... I very willingly did this, and didn't really regret it. Perhaps I'm just in denial. This is a part of why the cubing sections are so short, but I think it's a mix of that, a bit of lost-momentum, and generally being in a rather stagnant state of explicit progress right now. There's probably a few other reasons that aren't coming to mind too.

As is obvious, very short updates here. I hope I wont plateau and end up with this amount of news weekly, since it's a bit of a shame to have such little to write about. See you next week.

I've started a poll, since I'm not sure if the topics I'm talking about are actually interesting. Feel free to send any other related opinions my way.


CFOP:

I think you can guess that I haven't done much CFOP.


APB:

Alg drilling is so arduous and I do NOT want to be doing it... I hope to spend this week trying to rekindle my interest by having fun while cubing instead of just alg drilling, because I swear that's killing my motivation.

I contrived to do a few drills. UFR is in a good spot now, but RFU is in the early stages. I'm going to do 2 more days of UFR and then RFU for the rest of the week. No more simultaneous drilling!




Meh, the road-trip wasn't much. I guess I drilled both UFR and RFU once, but that was it. Turns out I can, in fact, play games the entire day of a road-trip and feel absolutely fulfilled. (ALSO I had this really nice lunch with brie and french baguette and it was soooo good )

That's all, see you next week.

Sunday update! Blah blah, got tired from a call on Friday, was busy the near entirety of yesterday, but here we are now!


CFOP:

And so, once more, there is nothing to report. When I was first picking cubing back up a few months ago, it was lots of fun to just solve, but here I am now with no motivation to & not finding much fun from it. I have a theory about periodic hyper-fixations, but I don't think I should talk about that just yet, since I have nothing concrete to really talk about... well, a follow up should be on its way in a few months or so.


APB:

UFR is in a good spot. I decided to continue on with UFR before starting RFU because I didn't want more shaky foundations to keep up with. I'm doing RFU this week.

Notably, there's the same lack of motivation and actual joy from this. I would really appreciate advice from anyone in the audience. For now I'm going to keep on going and see what happens. As is obvious, the attempt to rekindle my interest hasn't worked out.


Youtube tutorial for SSC:

New section! Remember that I mentioned I was potentially interested in making a youtube video? Well, I've decided to follow through with that. It's been very fun learning photo editing, but I haven't really gotten far into this. I have a rough outline, the early visuals, and a tiny bit of the script, but thats all.

I want to make this video in particular because SSC has no good tutorials for it, as far as I know. All the videos I found are either about a less advanced version of the method, or just generally confusing. The tutorial by Shadowslice himself is admittedly vague, and took a few rewatches to understand (and a really helpful comment). Of course, this is just 1 factor in my desire to make this. Another one is just that it's fun to make.


Also, I've been trying something really neat out: chronicling my day as I go. For example, "3:15 - 4:05 write forum post". It's been interesting to look back on my day and to be able to more easily point out pitfalls and such.


OK, that's all. See you later.

I guess it's easy to burn out if you've been learning a lot of algs for two different methods. I enjoy learning new methods, but not the algorithmic part unless it's going to be my main method for an event. Even without alg learning, getting bored with an event happens to me a lot, which is why I'm an allrounder; I get interested in another event instead. I've been doing some FMC lately, and I think FMC is pretty great because the blockbuilding approach requires no algs at all, just commutators, and even the DR/HTR approach requires only a handful of algs. I'm also going through my F2L cases looking for improvements. I hope you find something interesting in cubing, but if not, that's okay too.

For LXS specifically, (as a non-APB user who has no idea what he's talking about) surely you've learned a fair few tricks already and maybe you can intuitively figure out some of the RFU cases and compare to the alg to see if you got it right? That's how I like learning 3-style (which I'm once again taking a break from doing).

Monday...

Well, for one I don't really have much to talk about by way of cubing, and for two I've by all means missed my due, so except an update on Friday or Saturday this week.

Late yet again, but I'm not going to skip the update this time.


Cubing, as a whole:

As you may expect, I've not cubed at all. But, I realised I actually can elaborate on the "periodic hyper-fixations" point, which I brought up last proper update. So, by that I mean my interest in cubing has seemingly been in waves. The pattern has been getting into cubing, and after some time losing motivation. Not sure how else to flesh out my explanation, it's pretty simple. This is the third "cycle", if you will.

The question here is if I want to go ahead and drop cubing until the next time around, or if I want to continue on. I have no clue what my answer is, so I suppose I'm just going to give it some more time.

The why is the reason I didn't want to bring this up, since I have a theory, and its not unfounded or hastily made or anything, but I still think it's best to wait for further confirmation or disproval.


Youtube video:

I almost entirely forgot about this, since I've been forgetting to follow by my checklist, and it wasn't really at the forefront of my mind. I've decided I'm going to try simply using a checklist, and not chronicling the day, since I think the friction of writing it down every time I change activity meant I forgot to check my checklist.

I'll try my best to continue this project, but if I don't do much work on it this week, I'm going to quit. My hopes with this is that I won't drag out the project (like I did with the presentation), and that it'll assist with my motivation.


As is probably obvious, I've not really done much that I can write about, but that doesn't mean I've been doing nothing. I've spent quite a lot of time calling with friends (and gaming by extension), since that's what I've been wanting to do. I think I want to adopt a "do what I want to do" philosophy, at least to an extent. I'm sure that it could be harmful if taken too far, but what I mean is allowing myself to prioritise activities that are more appealing at a given time. For example, maybe for a few days I'd want to spend most of my time reading, and it would be fine to allow myself to take time away from other activities (or even ignore them entirely), and instead spend most of my time reading. Or perhaps the same scenario with cubing, or with gaming, or with playing with friends.


Also, I'm going on the return-road-trip tomorrow, so I'll update on how that goes.

That's all for now. See you next week.

PS, I'm keeping what you said in mind @Fred, but I'm kind of generally stagnant, and undecided on a lot of things, so I'm not proactively following or disregarding your advice at the moment.

Still on that road-trip (and absolutely knackered), so no update until next week. Although, I did cube a bit today, so that's a minor win, if you want to be gracious.

Hello! I started college this week! I won't go into how it actually went, but I think there's a few ramifications to consider:

1. I'm going to have to rein in my sleep schedule. Which means less time in the evening to cube, read, etc,.
2. I'm going to have to be a bit more thoughtful with my time, since I'll have less.
3. On days when I have college, I may be too tired for some activities, meaning I may have to forgo them on those days.

Hopefully I'll be able to work under these new conditions in such a way I'll procrastinate less, but it could definitely go both ways.


Cubing, as a whole:

I've done just a tiny bit of cubing over the last week and a half. Really not much, but still, better than nothing.


Youtube video:

First of all, I didn't do any work on it within the allotted week, but c'mon guys! I was on a road-trip! So I extended the period to until this update. I made some progress earlier today, meaning that's TECHNICALLY within time, so I'm letting myself off for now. I'm going to keep doing the "make some progress every week or I have to quit" experiment weekly.


That's all. This update was surprisingly hard to write, since I was really struggling to articulate what I was trying to say. Alas, hopefully next update will come to me easier.

So, after this very unproductive week, I've come to the realisation that I need a bit more structure, so I'm going to try implement a static schedule to abide by daily:

1: [Anything unaccounted for that takes number 1 priority]
2: Updating this progression thread
3: Projects (YT vid, research I want to do, silly card for a friend. etc,)
4: [Lower priority form of number 1]
5: Reading
6: Cubing
7: Drawing
8: Socialising (Watching something with my brother, messaging a friend, etc,)
9: Gaming (May tie into socialising)

I will aim for at least 30 minutes on most activities, but I'm hoping to spend a bit longer on some. I may also sometimes skip 1 or 2 if I don't have time on a busy day.

I'm going to try and ease myself into this schedule, starting with only some of the activities, then introducing the rest over the week:

The first 2 days will skip "Projects", "Drawing", and "Socialising".
The second 2 days will introduce "Projects".
And after those 4 days I'll do the full schedule.


Project:

Given I'm implementing this schedule, I'm going to give myself one last week.


Remember those guidelines for gaming I placed? I more or less disregarded them, because I felt I was in a good spot with gaming. I've since then realised that I am not, in fact, in a good enough spot to just freestyle when and how much I game. But, with the implementation of this schedule, I don't think I need any explicit rules. As long as I have done all the other activities already in a day, I don't need to pace myself and I can just play as much as I want.


Could this just be another one of my ideas that work for a week, then fall through? Definitely, but I think this is worth a try. Especially since it ties into other ideas that have worked. Things like using a checklist, only gaming at the end of the day, and making sure to start off the day with some productive activity.

Update on how it goes next week!

It's nice to be back to typing with a keyboard, after so much handwriting...


APB:

I drilled the UFR set once yesterday. I was expecting to have forgotten lots of algs, but surprisingly I found that most are thankfully intact. I'm going to resume drilling from here on out.


Youtube video:

I did a bit of work on it yesterday. I decided to try calling with a friend at the same time as the photo editing, and it was really fun, as well as helpful, since he gave me tips.


Extended thoughts on the schedule:

So far, it seems to work quite well on days where I don't have much planned. The main issue is when I do have much planned, and I can't be asked to muster the willpower to abide by some schedule once I'm back. I suppose I'll just keep trying for now and see how it goes.

Due to the aforementioned unwillingness to do much on busy days, the "gradually ease myself into it" idea didn't work. I did the truncated schedule twice on Saturday and Sunday, but then I just skipped most of the schedule on the following days. Thats also why I didn't write this on Friday: I wanted to give the schedule at least one full day to breath, so I could see how it properly performs. Thankfully, I have found it did, in fact, work well, and I did everything I wanted to yesterday.

Also, last week I didn't really elaborate on my thought process behind this very much, so here's a semi-detached thought about it:

My ideal goal here is to induce the same sense of necessity that toothbrushing causes. I've noticed that I've when I consider skipping brushing my teeth (because I'm a lazy bum), I always think "Well, I have to!". My idea is that, if I can get to the point where I feel that I have to, then I'll be far more likely to actually do stuff. I think this has so far worked for the most part.


I'm happy with how this week went. See you next time!

Not much to talk about, so I'll just confirm that I have been doing a few LXS drills, and working on the video. Hopefully I'll write more next week.

Just 4 days until my birthday!


APB:

I've now learnt that alg drilling doesn't really "stick" if you don't do it daily. I'm still alg drilling a couple of times a week, but that doesn't really cut it.


Youtube video:

Now that I'm more or less done the photo editing, I'm now moving onto the actual recording and voiceovers, which, since I haven't actually done it before, is quite daunting. Hopefully I'll get over this hurdle soon enough.


So, the schedule doesn't really work as a force of habit if I only do it 3/7 days a week. Nothing to really say there, I just have to get good and do it on busy days as well.


Yikes, this has been a long streak of short and shallow posts... the difference between now and when I first started is remarkable. I wonder if this is the fate of these updates, since most of my writing material has been used up, and more will be sparse. Regardless, here's to hoping for more detailed posts in the future. See you next week.

Not much to talk about. I'm considering shifting updates to biweekly.