M2M Day 261: It just “feels” good
This post is part of Month to Master, a 12-month accelerated learning project. For July, my goal is to solve a Saturday New York Times crossword puzzle in one sitting without any aid.
Today, I didn’t have too much time to train — but I was able to sneak in about 20 minutes with the Letter Trainer, and one Wednesday puzzle.
The Letter Trainer feels good to me. While I’m practicing, I can feel my brain engaging in the way I hoped: It’s as if I’m endlessly trying to crack the “Middle” part of a crossword, without needing to work my way up to this point of the puzzle as a prerequisite.
This is good news… By isolating a single part of the puzzle-solving process, I’m able to repeatedly strain the particular corresponding muscle in brain, giving myself a more effective and focused mental workout. In other words, the Letter Trainer seems likes a valuable tool.
Yet, in its current form, the Letter Trainer doesn’t give me an objective way to measure my progress. I’m only using feel — which isn’t necessarily a bad thing (at this point, I trust my learning instincts a lot) — but there may be an opportunity for further optimization.
I’m thinking of modifying the program, so I can actually enter my guess (rather than just thinking of it). This way, the program can record which answers I get right and wrong, allowing me to prioritize the types of words I’m having trouble with and to quantitatively measure my progress session-over-session.
Until then, I’m just going to try to get a good night sleep tonight. As much as I can try to optimize each little training exercise, my brain’s energy level seems to be the most important variable, so I’m going to treat it as such…
Read the next post. Read the previous post.
