[Member Intro] Hello!

[United Thought]

I am a 15 year old British cuber residing in the U of K. I started cubing roughly a year ago(+/- a few months) and have progressed thus:

Event: Main: Avg: Method:
222 - LingPo - 4-5 - Ortega + a few CLLs
333 - Gans 356 - 13-14 - CFOP - a few OLLs
444 - Weisu - 55-1:00 - Yau + Hoya occasionally
555 - Aochuang - 1:55-2:00 - Redux
666 - SS - 4:30 - Redux
777 - SS Mini - idk - Redux
Clock - Not Rubik's - 20-23 - Pochmann, or whatever it's called (no fixed pin order yet)
+don't care about the remainder of events.

My other interests are:

-Languages:

I enjoy studying languages at school, where I study French, Russian and Italian. Outside of school I study a bit of Danish, Dutch and Bulgarian, with interest in the Korean language as well. I am keen to improve them, exposure/interaction with native speakers would be a good way to do this, so if you are a native speaker or share an interest in one of these languages, please let me know!
Here is a summary of my abilities:​

Language: Ranking: Description: Length of time studied for:
French 1 Intermediate 2 years (school)
Russian 2 Intermediate - comparable to French 2 years (school)
Italian 3 Intermediate - slightly behind French 7-8 months (school/home)
Danish 4 Improving beginner 5 days (home)
Dutch 5 Improving beginner 1-2 weeks (home)
Bulgarian 6 Beginner 3 days (home)

-History:

I am very interested in history and will soon be studying at home the military history of the period 1590-1660.​

-Politics/Current affairs:

This is another area that greatly interests me. I read newspapers where I can and enjoy thinking about systems of government and thought,etc.​

Question:

As I will in the coming months and years be facing many crucial exams, I will have less and less time to spend cubing and so I ask, what are the best/most time-efficient practice techniques?

Thank you for reading this and considering an answer to my question!

 

[AlphaSheep]

Welcome!

I found that as I grew older and my free time became less and less, but I started using it more productively, and I enjoyed it more. Once I finished studying, my free time increased again, I find I don't get nearly as much done in my hobbies as I used to.

 

[TDM]

Welcome! Looks like we're similar speeds for 2x2-5x5. Where in the UK are you from?

If you want to improve, one thing you can do is finish OLL. This doesn't require you to be constantly practising, but once a day you could look up a new alg and learn it. You'll have to do some solving to get used to using it in solves, but that's not going to take up too much time.
Other things include doing slow turning solves - turning slower than normal, but looking ahead to the next pair so that you never pause during F2L. Once this starts getting easy, increase your turning speed and repeat. This will help your F2L a lot.

 

[United Thought]

Welcome! Looks like we're similar speeds for 2x2-5x5. Where in the UK are you from?

If you want to improve, one thing you can do is finish OLL. This doesn't require you to be constantly practising, but once a day you could look up a new alg and learn it. You'll have to do some solving to get used to using it in solves, but that's not going to take up too much time.
Other things include doing slow turning solves - turning slower than normal, but looking ahead to the next pair so that you never pause during F2L. Once this starts getting easy, increase your turning speed and repeat. This will help your F2L a lot.

I live in Cheltenham.

I acted quickly on your advice and I have already sort-of-learnt the remaining OLLs.
I have been doing this sort of F2L training for a while but mainly intermittently, perhaps I should make this along with pure solves my main practice methods.