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The Community Progress Thread - Have I Made Progress?

Zain_A24

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Hello Everyone,

You are all probably sick of seeing these but this one's going to be fun.

Myself and @Mo_A2244 have decided to make a progress thread of our own to document our improvement as well as who is "winning".

I am sure Mo will update you with his side of things but here's mine

Week 0. This is where I set myself a baseline. Where I have to start.
I did a grand total of 52 solves recently to dictate where I currently am in terms of times. Below is a summary:

Summary:
1596651441515.png
Aims for Week 1
1596651455407.png
Just a quick mid-week update.
These are my targets:

1596879307581.png



I think most of these targets can apply to any cuber looking to improve.
How many boxes will you tick this week. Feel free to comment below.
I will be sharing some tips this week that I found very helpful and some of you guys will find helpful as well.

Progress


1596879391932.png



Feel free to comment your tips for the rest of the viewers of this thread, and be sure to let us know what boxes you have ticked this week.

You are more than welcome to use this format

Name - Zain_A24
Solves Completed This Week - 28 (So Far)
Beaten Personal Time Goal - Yes
This Week's Solve Streak - 3 Days (Starting Wednesday)
Algorithms Learnt - 0
My Valuable Tips - (Coming Soon)
How many will I complete? Feel free to leave your guesses below.
 
Last edited:

Mo_A2244

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Hello Everyone,

You are all probably sick of seeing these (cough cough @BenChristman1 ;) ) but this one's going to be fun.

Myself and @Mo_A2244 have decided to make a progress thread of our own to document our improvement as well as who is "winning".

I am sure Mo will update you with his side of things but here's mine

Week 0. This is where I set myself a baseline. Where I have to start.
I did a grand total of 52 solves recently to dictate where I currently am in terms of times. Below is a summary:

Summary:
View attachment 13130

Aims for Week 1
View attachment 13131


[/SPOILER
Wait a minute, I thought this was Our Thread! ;) Some more spoiler issues by the way
 

Zain_A24

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Oh, don't worry, I'm not the only one.
Well we'll try to make it as engaging as possible as opposed to "I've made progress in X, I will be working on Y". Hopefully we share some interesting tips, scrambles and solve reconstructions etc that people may find useful, as well as promoting some healthy competition amongst people of a similar speed.
 

Nmile7300

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Not trying to start an argument here, but the main problem I have with most progress threads is the lack of anything interesting or original. You said it yourself, it is "just another progress thread". I've found that the threads like this that thrive are the ones with interesting yet achievable goals, multiple different events that the person is working on, somewhat frequent improvement, interaction with other members, and a person running it that keeps themselves accountable. The threads that tend to die quickly are the ones where the goals is simply "get faster at 3x3", the person isn't pushing themselves to get better, they don't interact with the people looking at there thread, and they often forget to update or try to bite off more than they can chew, trying to run their progress thread along with a bunch of other threads.

I've sort of evolved my thread because I realized that it wasn't the most original or interesting. For example, I changed the title of my thread so it wouldn't just be another progress thread or quest or whatever. At the same time, I allowed people looking at my thread to vote for what name they wanted. I try to do different types of events to keep it interesting. Doing multiple different events also increases the chances that I will have something to talk about, aka improvement. I also try to keep myself accountable and remember to give weekly updates. However, I still think I'm not doing the best job that I could be doing. I definitely have room to improve how I run my thread.

Lastly, make sure that you are making the thread for the right reason. You should want to create it because you want something to help motivate you to practice, not because it is "cool" or the popular thing to do. Admittedly when I first created mine, I mostly did it because everyone else was doing it.
 

Zain_A24

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Not trying to start an argument here, but the main problem I have with most progress threads is the lack of anything interesting or original. You said it yourself, it is "just another progress thread". I've found that the threads like this that thrive are the ones with interesting yet achievable goals, multiple different events that the person is working on, somewhat frequent improvement, interaction with other members, and a person running it that keeps themselves accountable. The threads that tend to die quickly are the ones where the goals is simply "get faster at 3x3", the person isn't pushing themselves to get better, they don't interact with the people looking at there thread, and they often forget to update or try to bite off more than they can chew, trying to run their progress thread along with a bunch of other threads.

I've sort of evolved my thread because I realized that it wasn't the most original or interesting. For example, I changed the title of my thread so it wouldn't just be another progress thread or quest or whatever. At the same time, I allowed people looking at my thread to vote for what name they wanted. I try to do different types of events to keep it interesting. Doing multiple different events also increases the chances that I will have something to talk about, aka improvement. I also try to keep myself accountable and remember to give weekly updates. However, I still think I'm not doing the best job that I could be doing. I definitely have room to improve how I run my thread.

Lastly, make sure that you are making the thread for the right reason. You should want to create it because you want something to help motivate you to practice, not because it is "cool" or the popular thing to do. Admittedly when I first created mine, I mostly did it because everyone else was doing it.

Well said. I was changing the title to "Not just a progress thread" probably whilst you were writing this. The best ones are not the ones that only benefit the person trying to improve, but the rest of the community, and that is exactly what myself and Mo will be doing. Sharing our progress whilst using it to help benefit others that are in a similar situation or with a similar weakness.

There's nothing wrong with "just wanting to improve in 3x3", if they do it in a way that benefits the community in even a minute way then that is great.

In terms of doing it because it is cool, I completely agree with you. There is nothing cool about following a trend. It will mainly be a motivational tool for us since we are currently doing a variety of other stuff outside of cubing such as making a commercial game, and we still want to spend time competing and improving as much as we can.
 

Zain_A24

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Yeah it's fine if you don't want to do other events, I just find that it helps keep the thread from dying quickly if you do more than one thing.

It will likely branch out due to a variety of circumstances

- We get a new cube for another event (NxN, Pyraminx, etc)
- We stop making as much progress in 3x3
- We temporarily lose interest in 3x3 (I know, it happens)
 

Zain_A24

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Just a quick mid-week update.
These are my targets:
1596879307581.png

I think most of these targets can apply to any cuber looking to improve.
How many boxes will you tick this week. Feel free to comment below.
I will be sharing some tips this week that I found very helpful and some of you guys will find helpful as well.

Progress

1596879391932.png
 
Last edited:

Zain_A24

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Week 1 Recap
1597255811993.png
1597255827358.png

I would appreciate if you could all fill out a quick survey of 4 questions, link below:

So, did I make progress? Yes and No

Highlights
- PB Single of 13.50 (previous PB - 14.44)
- Sub 20 Average of 25
- 103 Solves this week

Low Points
- Didn't learn any algs
- Didn't share any tips
- Didn't learn anything new, just practised existing techniques

Did you guys make any improvements this week? I will be updating the thread with my targets for Week 1, as well as the results of the Form
 

Zain_A24

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Time to bring this back from the dead.
I've got some good news and some bad news.

I've recently changed browser, meaning when I went to csTimer, my sessions have been refreshed. I've lost everything. RIP. There were some great solves in there, and I was just about to update you all on what a great few weeks of progression it has been. Ah well.

Well, the good news is that I've made a tonne of progress. Here's a few highlights:

- Plenty of full-step 13 singles and PB's (previous PB around the 15's)
- Finally a Sub-20 Ao12, Ao25, Ao50

I have finally broken Sub-20, and I will be looking to get a Sub-20 Ao100 (from what I recall, my previous average of 100 was extremely close at 20.1 ish.

I have been cubing for just over a year - 1 year 2 days (August 29th 2019)! It has been a great year on the forums and I am looking forward to continuing to engage with fellow forum members through speedsolving.com, YouTube, and social media.

How much progress have you made this summer?
 
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