Why do I share daily progress updates? → To maximize learning effectiveness.

Isn’t the rainy season ending way too early? It feels like ridiculous heat waves keep coming one after another. But even so, I’ve restarted jogging—not just for strength training, but to lose weight.

Honestly, I’d rather avoid getting sunburned and hate being all sweaty, but I keep pushing through these unpleasant things to build endurance and train my mind to keep working hard every day.

What? Are you thinking I’ve started some seriously boring daily life blog? Well, hang on a sec. If you read till the end, I think you’ll get what I’m trying to say.

Continuing Discomfort to Build the Habit of Effort

I intentionally keep doing things that are a bit unpleasant to help myself maintain the ability to keep working hard.
Of course, having a goal is essential to push yourself, and I do have my own goals that keep me going every day. Still, there are times when I end up mindlessly scrolling through X (formerly Twitter) or opening apps I don’t really need on my phone. When my focus drifts like that, it becomes hard to face the work I’m supposed to be doing.

On X, a lot of debates and arguments happen daily that have nothing to do with my goals. I don’t want my attention or focus stolen by things that are irrelevant to what I’m trying to achieve. So I try to ignore them as much as possible.

Sure, it’s easy and fun to waste time scrolling on X, but has it actually brought you closer to your goals? I ask myself that question often. Usually, just seconds after seeing something new—a photo or a debate—I’ve already forgotten it. So it’s way more productive not to waste attention on such things.

Effort Is Needed to Get Closer to Your Goals

Having a goal means continuously making efforts to move toward it. Even if you set a big goal suddenly, you can’t achieve anything without the steps to get there. You break down your goals into smaller pieces, achieve them little by little, and gradually get closer to the bigger goal. That process leads you to your final destination.

I said continuous effort is necessary, but spending all day on X without doing real work isn’t effort at all. Has your work progressed at all while doing that? Usually not. It’s common for me too to make little progress on days like that. So you have to step away from X and do things that help you focus on your work. That’s the way.

But if you watch too much X or YouTube and end up feeling too lazy to work, that defeats the purpose. So what do you do? Quitting X or YouTube suddenly is really hard. Dopamine addiction is scary.

In that case, it’s better to slightly change your approach and train your brain to make continuing effort easier.

In neuroscience, it’s said that training the anterior midcingulate cortex (AMCC) helps. This part of the brain helps you stay focused and keep acting even when facing mildly unpleasant situations.

If you train this part, when you find yourself mindlessly scrolling X or YouTube, you’ll be able to say, “Whoa, I’ve been on X too much, time to get back to work,” and correct your course smoothly.

Build the Habit of Doing Slightly Unpleasant Things to Keep Effort Going

Back to the beginning—I don’t have any desire to become an athlete or anything like that. Jogging in this scorching heat is pure misery, but I do it anyway. Sure, there’s a goal to lose weight, but a bigger purpose is training my AMCC.

Honestly, writing this blog is also somewhat uncomfortable for me… haha.
But continuing it is another way I train my brain to keep making effort.

Some creators might say, “Just make your works; don’t bother with other kinds of expression.” But trying other forms of expression or approaches can also be a way to break your own shell. So I think it’s fine to write whatever comes to mind.

For me, writing blogs has been a daily routine for a long time, so even if starting to write feels like a hassle, as long as I have a topic, it’s not stressful. Most of what I do is about building a brain that can sustain effort, and while it might seem roundabout, it’s an indispensable step to reach my goals.

I don’t like competing or arguing with others, and I don’t want to “win debates” or anything like that. It just wastes my attention and focus. So I think the only battle I need to fight and win is with myself.

Posting Progress Updates Can Accelerate Learning

Why do people post their progress on social media? Most of the time, it’s because they want “likes”—in other words, to satisfy their need for approval. However, done the right way, there’s a huge benefit: it can accelerate learning.

Why Learning with the Intention to Teach Speeds Up Your Progress

This is often said, so it might feel a bit cliché, but the reason is simple:

You can’t teach others unless your own understanding is above a certain level = it shows your knowledge hasn’t yet fully settled.

In other words, the gaps in your learning become clearly visible.

So to fill those gaps, you have to invest more time learning. This naturally speeds up your learning until you reach a level where you can confidently teach others.

Therefore, if you want to acquire knowledge and skills as fast as possible, it’s better to learn from the start with the intention to teach. When you try to explain something with incomplete understanding, you inevitably realize where you don’t understand well enough.

If you feel your knowledge and skills are still lacking, and you’ve been doing it for a while but feel stuck, this approach might help you.

By the way, I started garage kit modeling from the beginning with the mindset of teaching others and outputting my learnings. Of course, I worried what people better than me might think or whether they’d be confused by my sudden posts—but it didn’t really matter.

Also, as is often said, people don’t care about others as much as you think. Today, whether you posted what you ate or how much progress you made, or how to do a certain task easily—most people just don’t care. Most genuinely don’t care. (Thinking this way helps you output without pressure.)

Honestly, constantly worrying about others’ opinions is just overthinking. So you should just output your progress in the way that maximizes your own learning efficiency.

“Give me a concrete example!” — Okay, here you go

For example, I posted step-by-step updates on eye painting on X. Recently, that was for the Toki Bunny by French Doll.

Here’s the completion post:
https://x.com/sukimasangyo2/status/1942822882276696161

And here’s the start post:
https://x.com/sukimasangyo2/status/1941661155799466215

By outputting like I’m explaining to someone, I’ve managed to establish my techniques to a huge degree. Now I can explain why I do most of the steps.

Of course, there are still things I don’t know and many things to learn. I make mistakes and accept corrections. I believe this active learning helps me grow further.

Well, making and posting production videos has probably been the single biggest factor that boosted my learning, so I can’t exactly say “just copy me,” but if you try outputting your progress as if you’re teaching someone close to you, I think you’ll be able to clearly see what you’re lacking and learn more effectively.

By the way, I booked a garage kit sculpting course on Coloso, so I’ll probably get serious about studying now.

My ultimate goal is to be able to both sculpt and paint, so I’ve worked hard on painting so far—but looks like it’s finally time to light a fire under myself for sculpting, too.