Day 3 - Progress Logging

I like to keep my progress logging as simple as possible. Each week, I plan what results I want for each day of the week for the skill I’m practicing. During the exercise, I like to visualize what those results would look and feel like. This makes it more real and helps your brain help you get those results.


At the end of the day, after practice or study, I note:

  • What the actual results are.

  • How satisfied I am with the results.

  • How much time I’ve spent on it, in minutes.

  • The type of learning: practice, study, or teaching.

  • Any resources I’ve used during my learning session.

  • Any notes I may have had on the results for the day.


Here’s a sample page from my SkillUp Monthly Planner:

Skill: Gaining Mass for an Ectomorph

The logging itself is simple, but as you can imagine, the difficulty comes from figuring out what progress means for you and the skill. If you're still unsure how, you can refer back to Day 2.


Examples


An example I like to use is with language learning. When I set out to improve my Spanish, I practiced the past and future tenses, as well as some engineering terms. My goal was to be sufficiently good in spoken Spanish to potentially get a programming job in Spain. In software engineering, we do daily standup meetings where we tell what we did yesterday and what we’re doing today. If I could learn the past and future tenses, I’d be more equipped to be hired. A friend of mine was learning Spanish in Colombia to pick up girls.


I bet you can imagine how different our idea of progress was!


My planned results revolved around recalling the different verbs and how to conjugate them. His planned results revolved around how long he could sustain conversations and how many girls agreed to go on a date with him.

When it comes to rating, I like to factor in as many things as possible, but especially time. If I don’t practice at least 30 minutes, I make my rating a factor of that time. 


For the Gaining Mass example from above, my workouts were meant to be 60 minutes on average. If I did a perfect workout that day and it took 60 minutes, that’s a 10/10. But if I did a perfect workout in 40 minutes instead of 60, I’d rate myself 6.6/10 (40 / 60 x 10).


A perfect workout in that example means that I managed to do all the repetitions I meant to do for all the exercises that were planned.


For the learning Spanish example, it meant having perfect recollection of the verbs I picked for the day, which usually were the ones I had most problems with previously. 


Strategy to help you plan your results out


Before you even start learning a new skill, think about what you want to be able to accomplish at the end of your practice. Always give yourself a deadline. Mine’s simple: I practice skills in chunks of 15 hours, broken down into daily 30-minute practice. I start on the first day of the month and end on the last day of the month. That’s always my deadline. 


If you have less time to practice or you’re not sure you’re going to stay motivated for that long, simply set yourself a more reasonable deadline for you. 


Set deadlines that will motivate you to take action on your learning and not discourage you. An approach I like to use is the SMART goals-setting approach — that is, make your goal:

  • Specific: direct, detailed, and meaningful.

  • Measurable: quantifiable or qualifiable.

  • Attainable: realistic for you given your constraints.

  • Relevant: aligns with your other goals.

  • Time-bound: has a deadline.


Let’s use the Gaining Mass example again:

  • Specific: I want to gain 15 lbs by working out 3x per week following the bones-to-buff program and eating 4,500 calories daily following my meal plan (omitting it here because it was very detailed!).

  • Measurable: I will track the number of calories, my practice time at the gym, and the weight I’m at daily.

  • Attainable: I want to gain 15 lbs of muscles and lose 3 percent body fat (very hard but attainable for me).

  • Relevant: I want to record videos and don’t want to look like an unhealthy and skinny guy.

  • Time-bound: I have 30 days to reach this goal.


Once you have your overall result clear in your mind, start breaking into down into weeks of practice. What results do you want out of each week to reach your ultimate goal? If you practice is longer than two weeks, you’ll likely be wrong in your planning, but that’s fine. I adjust my plan on a daily basis to make up for that.