This is Really Pathetic!

I've not done any tactics in a while. Things keep popping up (kids sick or I'm sick or work-related stuff) or I end up playing on FICS rather than studying tactics.

Additionally, I feel that I will never really be satisfied with my tactical studies and that they might continue for years and years (as they should).

So I've come to a realization that I need to find a way to end this quest while at the same time save my face. I've decided to end my quest at the 500 mark rather than the 1039 mark. I am going to do 4 circles in 10 days and then call this quest complete. Some of you may remember a Knight Errant by the name of Smith-Morra who did 500 tactics in 30 days. I'm essentially going to follow his schedule from Circle 2 to Circle 5.

Another reason to do this is that my family and I will be going on a long vacation in June. I will arrive back home at the end of the month while my dear wife will stay with her parents for a few additional weeks. When I come back home, I'm going to use all that extra time on my hands to finish this quest.

More importantly, yet another reason to cut this quest short is because some major career events are on the immediate horizon which will disrupt my schedule considerably. If I don't finish now, I will perhaps never finish any sort of tactical quest.

Maybe if I complete this quest, I might find courage to work on another 500 tactics. But for now I feel I need to come to a conclusion with this tactical quest.

So look for me to post again at the end of June and then hopefully my quest will end sometime in the middle of July.

Another Update

I've decided to try to cut the number of tactics I do in a day. In stead of working 150 problems at a time, I'll work 75. This will free up some time to work on other areas.

Tonight I reviewed 75 tactics in CT-ART and 24 on CTS.

CT-ART: 301-376
CTS: 24 (2218 total ... 69.7%)

Status Update

Since I last posted, life got really hectic. I laid off the tactics big time. The thing I need to realize is that I need to take a steady, consistent diet of daily tactics. I shouldn't gorge for a few stays and then starve myself for a week.

Perhaps the biggest challenge I face in completing The Circles is time constraint. There are just so many things to do in a day. Obviously work takes up most of my day and when things are slow at work, I wish I could use that time to study tactics. But since I can't install CT-ART on my PC at work, I've decided to just input chunks of 10 problems into pgn format and then study tactics from CT-ART that way (since I could install a pgn reader on my work PC).

I've also decided to dedicate more time to studying from some of the books I have as well as playing more games on FICS. So hopefully I can work a bit on tactics at work (when it's slow or on my lunch break) and then study and play on-line at night.

I'm still trying to stick to the plan I discussed last time. I'm up to #460 in CT-ART.