Progress update and giving learning math fundamentals another shot with better guidelines.
November and December were not as productive for my learning journey as I wanted them to be.
Between the craziness of my business and the holidays, I made some progress but I fell extremely short of finishing everything up to Precalculus before the start of 2021.
I am 44% through 7th grade.
I still have yet to finish:
- 8th Grade
- Algebra 1
- Geometry
- Algebra 2
- Trigonometry
- + Precalculus
Why did I fail?
1. Drastically underestimating the time commitment
I made my estimations based on how quickly I finished the 4th & 5th-grade curriculums. Each one only took me around 1–2 pomodoros each (25 min focused periods) so I built my projections based on those.
Since I knew most of the subject matter in those early curriculums it was mostly review, so I breezed through them.
Once I got to 6th grade I had to actually watch some of the lessons and relearn a lot of the concepts. This made it so I had to put 2–3x more time to finish the section.
Incrementally add even more time per each curriculum and you can see where I did a bad job of estimating my completion time.
2. Unrealistic expectations
I did 22 intervals for a total of 9 hours and 10 mins from Nov. 1st to the end of Dec. I originally estimated that would be able to do 5–10 hours a week.
Expectation: 50 hours Nov-Dec — 25 hours/minimum per month
Reality: 9 hours Nov-Dec — 4.5 hours/per month
Personal Reflection:
Not making excuses, just analyzing my situation to try and make sure I create the space and environment to get through this.
I currently run 2 businesses, a digital marketing agency and a SaaS business.
Between those, a recently engaged relationship, and maintaining a strict exercise schedule I wasn’t able to commit the time I originally had planned on allocating to my studies.
I also thought that I could study after my workday.
For example; Workout 7–8 am, Work 9 am–5 pm, Study 5 pm–7 pm.
I did not anticipate that I would (naturally) have late days and sometimes be so mentally drained from work that I would lack the mental fortitude to do something that was as resource intensive as studying math.
The Adjustment (attempt #2)
I’m going to study before I start any work for my business. This way when I’m mentally energized I can spend the best parts of my day learning.
I’m also going to schedule out 3 hours a week for learning.
Start there, and work my way up eventually to 5–6 hours (if I can).
With this shift in schedule and adjustment in my estimations here is my updated learning curriculum for 2021.
I’m also a very visual learner. To prevent distractions by going onto YouTube, when I get stuck and I need additional examples, I also found complementary Udemy courses that I’m going to take in tandem.
Total Time: 132.5 hours
Estimated Time for Completion
Realistic: 132.5/3 hours= 44 weeks = 11 months
Ideal: 132.5/5 hours= 26.5 weeks = 7 months
Aggressive: 132.5/8 hours = 16.5 weeks = 4 months
I fully expect that this curriculum is going to take me most of the year to complete. I wish I had the time to get all of this done within a couple of months but based on what I’ve actually been able to commit to I’ve set a more realistic timeline for myself.
I’ve reminded myself that there is no rush to get this done, I’m doing this to really grasp and learn these concepts deeply so if by the end of the year I’m able to learn the entirety of middle school and high school math curriculum I will be satisfied with my end result.
Wish me luck.
