Weekly Review Template for Steady Improvement

Track first-attempt moves, completion rate in multiplayer, and one repeated error category.

Do not track too many metrics. Three metrics are enough for action.

First-attempt moves measure your route planning quality. This is the move count of your initial solution before any optimization. Over weeks this number reveals whether your pattern recognition is improving. A drop of 0.5 moves per month is excellent progress.

Completion rate in multiplayer measures your reliability under pressure. Track how many of your bids you successfully execute. If you bid on 10 rounds and clear 8, your completion rate is 80%. Anything above 75% is solid; below 60% means you are overbidding.

The repeated error category is qualitative. Each week, identify which mistake you made most. Was it forgetting stoppers? Over-setup? Late resets? Naming the error creates accountability and gives you a specific focus for improvement.

Keep it simple. A spreadsheet with one row per day and columns for date, daily challenge moves (first attempt), daily challenge moves (optimized), multiplayer rounds played, multiplayer rounds cleared, and a free-text notes column is more than sufficient.

At the end of each week, add a summary row with averages and your single biggest takeaway. The summary row is what you will reference in future weeks, so make it meaningful. Do not write generic observations like 'played well.' Write specific ones like 'struggled with center targets, need to practice column-first approaches.'

Store the sheet somewhere you access daily. A pinned note on your phone, a bookmarked Google Sheet, or even a physical notebook by your desk. The best tracking system is the one you actually use.

Once per week, choose one habit to remove and one pattern to reinforce. Keep scope small to ensure execution.

The habit to remove should be your most frequent error from the week. If you caught yourself making late resets four times, your focus for next week is setting a firm 3-move checkpoint and resetting without hesitation.

The pattern to reinforce should be something that worked well. If you noticed that checking for L-wall pockets near the target sped up your solving, commit to doing that scan as the first step of every puzzle next week. Reinforcing success is just as important as eliminating errors.

Write both decisions down. Vague intentions are forgotten by Monday. A written commitment like 'Next week: always reset by move 3 if unsure, and always scan L-walls first' creates a concrete practice contract with yourself.

Assign two short drill blocks: one for path planning, one for execution speed. Alternate focus each day.

A path planning drill might be: solve 5 puzzles with unlimited time, focusing on finding the minimum-move solution. Do not worry about speed at all. Analyze each solution for reusable patterns.

An execution speed drill might be: solve 5 puzzles with a 45-second hard timer. Accept suboptimal solutions but demand completion within the time limit. Track your success rate.

By alternating these drills, you develop both dimensions of skill without neglecting either. Players who only practice speed plateau on route quality. Players who only practice optimization cannot perform under time pressure. The alternating structure prevents both failure modes.

Every four weeks, zoom out and compare your weekly summaries. Look for trends that are invisible at the weekly level. Maybe your first-attempt moves have been flat for a month but your completion rate has climbed steadily. That means you are getting better at executing routes even if you are not finding better routes yet. The planning improvement might come next.

Set a quarterly goal based on realistic projections from your data. If your current first-attempt average is 5.5 moves and it has been dropping 0.3 per month, a quarterly goal of 4.6 is ambitious but achievable. If your completion rate is 70% and climbing 5% per month, aim for 85% by quarter end.

Avoid comparing yourself to other players' published stats. Everyone starts from a different baseline and has different practice schedules. The only meaningful comparison is you this month versus you last month.

The biggest pitfall is reviewing without acting. Reading your notes and thinking 'interesting' accomplishes nothing. Every review must end with one concrete action for next week. If you cannot identify an action, your tracking is too vague. Add more specific notes during play.

Another pitfall is perfectionism in tracking. If you miss a day of logging, do not abandon the whole system. Fill in what you remember and move on. Partial data is infinitely more useful than no data.

Finally, avoid changing too many things at once. If you identify five problems in your review, resist the urge to fix them all simultaneously. Pick the highest-impact one and focus exclusively on that for a week. Sequential improvement beats parallel chaos.