

Ask HN:How do track your daily learning progress? - sharmi

Hi,
  I'm taking a break from work for a few months. I would like to utilize the time effectively to learn about an unfamiliar branch of computing and try applying it to interesting problems.  So it is part learning and part applying.<p>But I'm afraid I might lose track or balance and not achieve as much as I would like to.  I believe tracking my activities daily would help.  I should also be able to share it with my accountability buddy.<p>It would be nice to also be able to map my daily activities to the overall plan to visualize how much progress has been made.<p>Have you faced a similar situation?  How did you handle it?  Was there any particular tool that was useful for you? It would be great if you can share your experiences.
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ninthfrank07
I currently use <http://lift.do/> (it's an iPhone app) to keep track of what I
do and to see my progress. I can also see what my friends are doing and prop
them. And they can see what I'm doing and prop me. Every day, I receive an
email showing me my progress.

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sharmi
Hi Ninthfrank, It seems to be an interesting app. Unfortunately I don't have
an iPhone. :(

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ninthfrank07
I also use <http://rescuetime.com>. It might be helpful to you if you just
want to track what you do on your computer. It's just an app you install on
your PC or Mac and it runs in the background. And then you can go on their
website to see where exactly you spend your time and how productive you are.

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sharmi
Hi ninthfrank, Thanks for the suggestion. I did use rescuetime. It gives
interesting stats. Since I spend a lot of time on coursera videos playing in
vlc, it decided i was wasting a lot of time ;) It was very useful nonetheless.
Unfortunately it stopped working when I changed my desktop environment. I will
go back and get it working again.

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khetarpal
I'm just using a spreadsheet via Google Docs. On one tab, I have broad areas
that I want to learn. After that I break that down into weekly milestones
based on the book / learning material. This includes projects or specific
assignments I'm supposed to accomplish. Once I have the roadmap created, I
then follow the pomodoro technique. The pomodoro technique is quite handy to
monitor my productivity on a regular basis.

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sharmi
Hi Khetarpai, Thank you, that is the closest that we could get to managing
learning tasks I think.

