Tweaking My Categories for Time Tracking

For a few years I have been using an IOS time tracking application to account for the time I spend on various Go Activities. 

It is Now Then Time Tracking Pro available only for IOS in the App Store.

I started with relatively few categories, but as time went on my categories increased. To make things easier for myself I organized my categories by color and by teacher. 

Clossius, BenKyo Baduk, and Yang all have their own color, and certain types of activity have their own color as well. In-seong Hwang falls under Yunguseng Dojang.

For a while it was sufficient to group activities of the same color next to each other, and to scroll through the list to get to the specific activity I wanted. Over time, as more activities were added, scrolling became cumbersome. The scroll to get down to Yang Lessons took some time.

A few months ago it was suggested that I only bother to count certain essential Go Activities in my tracking, which I did for a while. In order to achieve that goal I learned how to to create a nested list for a category that I named Essential Go Activities.

For a couple months I continued to track all other activities in the background but only reported on the Essential Go Activities on my blog using a filter to show only the subtasks of Essential Go Activities. 

Since then I have decided that I will track my activities for my own pleasure, NOT to convince anyone else that I am doing enough of certain activities. So the Essential Go Activities category is no longer in use, but it remains at the bottom of my list.

The most important thing I learned from that experiment of reporting on Essential Go Activities was how to nest subtasks below a main task. This offered me a way to clean up my list.

Each task in the image below has sub tasks as evidenced by the existence of a right facing carrot. I'll illustrate of few of the sub task lists.

Each Teacher has his own set of sub tasks. Ben's sub tasks are shown above.

The Miscellaneous Study category is a catch all category. If I don't have a sub task for an activity even in this catch all category I will use Miscellaneous Study without selecting a sub task. So at any time that I feel as if I am putting in the effort to study, and I have no category to describe what I am doing, I will default to using that main category. The color of this category was designed to feel neutral.

I've added some names to what used to be a generic Twitch Category which was designed to show time spent watching people other than Clossius and BenKyo Baduk on either Twitch or YouTube.

Here we see the activities of just one day showing that I had watched a Nick Sibicky video for 17 minutes.

If you are considering tracking time with Now Then, I would recommend starting by allowing the application to assign colors to your task. You can always edit them later. Start small and decide how you want to organize things as you go along.

My Week of Go Activities

 

I still am taking a bit of a break from go. I only put in a little over 16 hours on Go Activities this week, though I did mange to play six games. I had three wins and three losses. I'm still not playing slowly, but I only had one game that fell below an average of 10 seconds per move, so I am making a tiny bit of progress in that respect. 

I am concentrating on Sanrensei for my openings in even games. I managed to win an AYD Game using Sanrensei and had it reviewed by both In-seong and also by BenKyo Baduk. Even Clossius opened the game during our lesson to click through it to see how I had done because he had seen in chat that I had done well with Sanrensei.

In my two hour Lesson last Friday Clossius reviewed games the entire time for me rather than playing a teaching game in the final half of the lesson. One of the things that came out during that lesson is that I am not doing so well during end game. This was confirmed by the review of my most recent AYD Game where it was pointed out to me by Kimsamsam that I had actually been ahead, but had lost during the end game. That game will appear in the spreadsheet for next week. I lost it by 8.5

My Week of Go Activities - BenKyo League is Going Strong

 

I must shout out the BenKyo League again. It is really growing, and it has a fantastic community. Below is a picture of Ben featured in his new Promotional Site. it is a very attractive site.

The first thing you will see there is my testimonial which is only right, as I am the official BenKyo Ambuzzsawdor.

My games this week were all played as a part of the BenKyo League, BKL for short. I actually played four Main League games in two days this week. I am in the C League which is composed of 8k through 5k players. The B League is composed of 4k and 3k players while the A league is 2k and above.

We even have a D League now which is composed of DDK players all the way from 10k to 20k. It is not too early to join BenKyo League if you are DDK. It is actually the best way to power through the DDK ranks with the help of the friendly players in BKL.

I bet you can't read Ben's Promotional Literature without being inspired to join. If you do tell him that buzzsaw sent you.

I lost more games than I won last week, but I had fun.

Here are my stats for the week.

My Week of Go Activities - Rise to D1 in AYD

I'll start this week's post with the announcement that I rose from D2 to D1 in AYD for the final cycle of the current season. The rise was undeserved, but appreciated nonetheless. 

My opponent failed to show for the game that was supposed to be played on Friday. As a result I got a forfeit win. That game would have been very high stakes if it had actually been played. If I had won the game I would have gone up to D1. If I had lost the game I would have gone down to D3.

I find myself now in a league with players significantly stronger than myself. This has happened a few times before. Two of the players have come down from C3, and one of them came up with me from D2. The remaining two managed to stay in D1 for this cycle based on their records in the previous cycle.

I'm writing this post after my first game which was played with bugspray who came down from C3. The first game of a new cycle pairs the strongest player with the weakest player. He is the strongest player, and I am clearly the weakest player.

I had the pleasure of playing bugspray at the U.S. Go Congress this year in the Die Hard Tournament where we played an even game. We were both registered as 9k, though he was clearly stronger than I. 

Bugspray had a very good Congress, and I suspected I would not win against him in our league game, but I expected to make it past the opening.

Here is where I resigned. I am black. Ordinarily I would have continued to play after the loss of a group in the opening. In this instance I knew there was no chance for me based on the fact that this person is  significantly stronger than myself, probably more than his YD rating would suggest.

I hope it wasn't considered unsportsmanlike to resign a game I felt I had no chance to win, but I did not have the spirit to go through the motions.

Enough about that.

Here are the stats for the week:

I spent fewer than thirteen hours on Go Activities last week. I have been taking a break. I don't have a Lesson with Clossius this week coming up, so I took a break.

Only three games were played.

One of the games was a special AYD Game that In-seong arranged for me with a player whose opponent had also not shown up for their AYD Game. We goth go forfeits.

I had a lead in the game but fell victim to a problem that cost me quite a few stones. I considered resigning that game, but it was a far different situation from the game with bugspray. 

Something bad had happened, but I was ahead before it did, and my opponent was weaker than myself,  so I felt that there was still a chance. I did want to exert a little Mind Control by not rage resigning. 

The resignation in the other game had been a Despair Resignation rather than a Rage Resignation.

Here is what happened in the second game. Whoops. Even more of a woops because I could have saved the majority of the stones and maintained my lead.

Big Whoops

It could have gone this way.

I wasn't happy about this loss by 2.5 points, but I got quite a nice review from In-seong, and I took my loss in stride. It was very nice of In-seong to arrange a game for us.

In kindness to those on the Facebook Go Group, I did not post a link there to a recent blog I wrote about Creating Homework on 101 Weiqi. 

I'll make it a point to add any mid week blog post links to my usual Weekly Go Activities post to avoid controversy on Facebook about me posting once a week.

Creating Homework on 101 Weiqi

I recently shared this screen capture of my daily homework assignments from 101 Weiqi on the BenKyo Baduk Discord Server.

Every day 101 Weiqi gives me six new sets of problems in the categories listed above. I made the number of problems part of the name of the problem set.

I believe you need to have an account on 101 Weiqi in order to create homework. This post does not go into how to create such an account, but it will server to guide those who have accounts on how to create homework.

A user named bani on the BenKyo server helped me to create homework by directing me to an archived thread on another server. Rather than reinvent the wheel I am going to direct you there as well.

You want to join the "PogChamps Unite" Discord Server.

Once there you want to click on this icon at the top of the screen which will show you archived threads.

There is apparently only one archived thread and that is the one you want. You want to read the entire thread called "101 Weiqi set up".

It starts out like this:

You may find everything you need there to set up your homework.

I use the Firefox browser for 101 Weiqi.

The screen capture below will show you that I have not been good lately about doing homework, but I hope to do better.

My WEEKS of Go Activity - I Must Slow Down

 

I missed posting last week, so I am consolidating the information for two weeks into one post. I'm starting with a list of my games played. 

• The good news is that I won all but one of my games
• The bad news is that I played fewer games than I should 
• The terrible news is that I played way too fast

The column to the right of the Server column shows the number of seconds spent on average per move. All but one of my games was played at blitz speed these past two weeks.

I am still playing at blitz speed and I need to do something about it.

My one loss was by 3.5 points and it is a Clossi League Game, so I will get the benefit of a review soon on that game.

I'm not going to bother with the pie chart from two weeks ago because it looks fairly similar to the one from last week. Let's just move forward from here, and I will try to remember to post in a timely fashion in the future.

I engaged in more than thirty hours of go activity last week. 

My Live Play time was way down and needs to be improved.

My Week of Go Activities - BenKyo League is Growing Quickly

 

The BenKyo League (BKL) is really taking off. In this past month alone seven new members have been added to the roster and more are on the way. There is no better time to join BenKyo League as we head into November likely to add one or even two new leagues to our Main Leagues.

Take a look at Tier 3 of Ben's Patreon to see what you get for $25.00 a month. You get three interactive group classes a month and access to all of the previous Group Class Videos. There are currently twelve of them to study. 

You get special sgf files too. You get participation in a Main League where you get games with players close to your rank, handicapped as appropriate. You compete in the main league for prizes of Twitch Lesson Time with Ben. First and second place in each Main League get a prize. You are guaranteed at least one review of a Main League game from Ben for the month and likely more if you play a lot of games.

The Title Tournament is a chance to compete for fun titles against all league players. You can play each one up to three times in the course of the month.  

You get a game with Ben either one-on-one if you are in the A League, or a simul game if you are in B or C league.

I could go on, but check out his Patreon for more details.

If you decide to join BenKyo League tell him that buzzsaw sent you.

Now for my usual content...

This is what my week looked like.

I've gotten tired of showing only my Essential Go Activities and have decided to start sharing all of my activities again. 

I recently watched a video about Michael Redmond. At the end of the video he said that if you are not a professional you should do what you like when studying go. I'm going to take that advice to heart concerning my blogging, and I'm going to show all my activities in my blog content.

For a while I was showing only Essential Go Activity. Now I am going to show it all.

I spent over 27 hours on Go Activity this week.

Much of it was not Essential Go Activity.

I spent over six hours Watching Others Play. While doing so I was practicing reading. I think it was a worthwhile use of my time, and it was also fun.

I played 9 games last week and lost five of them. It is a fairly even result, but it didn't feel that way. I'm not counting the teaching games with Clossius and BenKyo Baduk.

As for Essential Go Activities... 

It was pretty one sided with all of my time spend on Live Play.

I definitely need to start spending some time on Go Problems again, and also Reviewing My Games.

My Week of Go Activities - Reviewing a BenKyo Baduk Lesson

 

Ben Mantel, BenKyo Baduk, has suggested that I play fewer games and spend more time reviewing the games I play. He also believes that it would be beneficial for me to memorize a few things. To that end he has started to take advantage of the OGS variation feature which allows you mark variations in a game record. This feature can be used in a Game Review.

In the image above there are three important elements. 

From left to right we have my MacBook Pro, my Cat, and my iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard.

On the MacBook Pro I have the Game Review which has a great many Variations added. The cat is just sleeping. On the iPad Pro I have the video of my lesson opened. As I watch the video I can stop and hover over variations or click on them to replay them move by move. 

Although it takes a bit of time in the lesson for Ben to enter the variations I think that it is going to be time well spent if it makes the sgf of the Game Review more useful. I've always thought that watching my lesson videos is valuable but have sometimes been frustrated trying to find things in the sgf that I want to click through to memorize or replay.

Now for my usual weekly content:

It was a low activity week for Essential Go Activities. I clocked in at fewer than four hours this week, most of them being Live Play.

I played only five games and one of them was a Teaching Game with Clossius during my lesson.

My Week of Go Activities

 

My post for this week is coming a bit late. I'll be following up with a post abut another week in a few days. The week was heavy on Live Play and very light on Review and Go Problems.

I am still struggling with playing too fast. I need to be more mindful of playing slowly and using my time. 

That is all I have to say for this week.

But, heh, look at all that green. Eleven games played and only three losses. Not bad.

My Week of Go Activities: I Won the Clossi September League

Clossius started up his league again. Now I have another great league to compete in.

Above you will see the results of the first month of League Play. I managed to come out in first place for the month of September which comes with a cool prize of a two hour teaching game. I played eight games and won six of them. 

I've scheduled my prize for Thursday, October 5th at 2:00 PM EDT.

Everyone is welcome to observe my teaching game on Clossi's Twitch Stream.

Check out Shawn's Web Site to join the league.

I spent over six hours on Essential Go Activities this week with most of the time devoted to Live Play. I actually need to do more Go Problems and spend more time Reviewing My Games.

It was a good week for wins. I won six out of seven games.

I decided to have Yilun Yang give me reviews of my two most recent AYD League Games. And I got the brilliant idea of actually linking to a review that another BenKyo League Member did of one of my BenKyo League Games.

BTW, if you show up for a Clossius Game Review Stream there is a possibility that you might be gifted a free one month membership in his league. He did that for one person in stream in the last two streams I attended. He is streaming more often now, so be on the look out for a link to his stream in the upper right corner on OGS. 

My Week of Go Activities - Shared Go Lesson Taught by BenKyo Baduk

 

I did better logging time for Essential Go Activities this week. I logged nearly eight hours and over five of them were devoted to Live Play. I put in another 16 hours on Non Essential Go Activities which included lessons and watching videos.

I played six games and won only two of them, but they were both by resignation. The four games I lost were all very close, one of them a 0.5 loss. So I felt that I had a good week.

I could have played more games, but I got tied up with a long lesson Thursday night.

Ben Mantle tried something new with me and a player very close to my level who is a good friend of mine. We shared a lesson which went a little over three hours. We each used 90 minutes of our time for the lesson and got a game reviewed. In addition to that we ended up discussing some life and death situations. It was an interesting way to study together. The other player and I have been sharing our lesson video links with each other since we started taking lessons with Ben, so it was logical that he would come up with the idea of combining our lessons to see how it would go. I'd consider doing it again on occasion. It might be really good as a public stream where we use our Twitch Time.

Anyone considering lessons with Ben should check out his Patreon Tiers. There you can see what all of the Tiers have to offer. I recommend Tier 3 as the best starting point. If you join at that level you get three group lessons a month and nearly unlimited league play.