M2M Day 64: I (already) need a new plan
This post is part of Month to Master, a 12-month accelerated learning project. For January, my goal is to solve a Rubik’s Cube in under 20 seconds.
Going into each month, I have a reasonably good idea how I plan to approach that month’s challenge.
This month, my plan was simple: Learn the 62 Rubik’s Cube algorithms I don’t know. Obtain a sub-20 time.
I figured that, since I know only 21% of the algorithms, learning the remaining 79% will drop my time low enough to meet my goal.
It turns out that it’s not this simple.
Right now, algorithms don’t matter
As a reminder, there are four steps to solving the Rubik’s Cube (The cross, F2L, OLL, and PLL), which I explain in yesterday’s post. As a simplification, there are really two parts to the solve: The intuition-based part, which includes the cross and F2L, and the algorithm-based part, which includes OLL and PLL.
My original plan was just to focus on the algorithm-based part, since this approach seemed contained, very measurable, and well-defined. I would learn three algorithms per day, leaving me one week at the end to practice and perfect all the algorithms together.
But there’s a problem: it takes me, on average, 30–35 seconds just to reach the algorithm-based part of the solve. In other words, even if I learned and could perform all 78 algorithms perfectly, at full speed, I wouldn’t even reach that part of the solve until much after 20 seconds elapsed.
Basically, the intuition-based part (the cross and F2L) currently takes way too long, making it unignorable. In fact, since it makes up the majority of my solve time, I will likely need to put much of my focus on these steps.
The 20-second breakdown
According to Rubik’s Cube forums, if I want to solve the cube in 20 seconds, my time should be allocated, more or less, in the following way.
- Cross: 2 seconds
- F2L: 10 seconds
- OLL: 2 seconds
- PLL: 6 seconds
Thus, I need to throw out my algorithm-based plan, and instead, create unique plans for each stage to achieve the necessary times.
Of course, I can give and take seconds from step to step, depending on where my strengths lie, but this is a good framework to start with.
Tomorrow, I need to start experimenting with F2L training techniques (since these past three days I’ve spent just learning new algorithms).
I have a hunch that I will be reprising November’s use of a metronome…
Read the next post. Read the previous post.
