I stopped solving magic cubes mid last year because my daily routine was becoming over committed and solving became a chore. I have decided to resume solving because of the benefits to focus and concentration. There's no particular shame to taking a break from a hobby, so there is no guilt here. So, here I am sixty solves into starting again. I can't recall certain key algorithms, so I'm a bit slow.
My mean solve time is only slightly higher than my global mean. That's worse than it sounds because the global mean solve time includes early solves where I was learning using inefficient algorithms. On the plus side, the graph shows that I am picking up my old speed again. The lowered deviation points to better consistency. I don't want deviation to be too low or there's no room for improvement.
These are the Average over X solves. The middle two columns are the best AoX and the last column has the current AoX values. Comparing my best AoXs globally and from the current session shows that I have lost quite a bit of speed from my peak performance. However, just as the graph shows some improvement over time, the way the AoX's stack in the final column imply that I am improving again. Key for me is that the Ao12 is higher than the Ao50. Yes, it's possible to infer this from reading the graph but sometimes small improvements are difficult to discern from noisy graphs and so summary statistics become more useful.
I'm including the Other tab for completeness. There's not really much to say here. I know personal best times are what we celebrate, but for me they're not the best or most reliable measure of improvement. A best time has a high luck component to it. Sometimes you just get an easy scramble and can skip a lot of steps. Sometimes you accidentally make good choices.
So what to do with this information? Well, it's time to put a performance plan into place. That starts with goals:
GOAL: to re-memorise key beginners method algorithms
GOAL: to regain a sub 1:40 Ao50 solve time
And an action plan to achieve my goals:
ACTION: for every five solves, spend 5 minutes working solely on algorithm memorisation. Both, sequence memory and muscle memory.
ACTION: no set number of solves per day - this is not a chore.
And a review step:
Review progress, goals and actions at 300 solves.
So, there we go. Let's see how I do. Until next time, Steem on.
