Circle Three Status Report

I thought I would update everyone on the third circle. Things are going well, but with a trip to Cirque du Soleil this past Wednesday to see Varekai, and my wife's parents in town for her aunt's 60th birthday this weekend, I've fallen a little behind already. (Can someone find that pause button on the remote control of life please?) Anyway, I've finished 630 problems so far and am 36 problems behind. I tweaked my schedule slightly to make days 6, 7, and 8 go from 70, 70, and 56 problems to a more balanced 66, 65, 65 since they are pretty much all level 40 (so why do 70 one day and 56 the next?). I've been keeping closer tabs on how long it is taking me, and through level 30 I was averaging between 1.5 - 2.5 minutes per problem. And that time includes trips to the bathroom, grabbing a quick snack, etc. so I guess I'm doing okay for now.

Anyway, here's a look at my current numbers:

     Circle 1 %  Circle 2 %  Circle 3%
     ----------  ----------  ---------
Level 10     96%         99%       100%
Level 20     91%         93%        95%
Level 30     74%         80%        87%
Level 40     69%         74%        87% (in progress)
Level 50     67%         72%
Level 60     55%         64%
Level 70     60%         58%
Level 80     57%         --
Level 90     55%         --

Doing these problems can be surprisingly frustrating, especially when you miss problems that you got correct on prior passes. That sort of thing just drives me batty. I look at a problem, recognize it, and even remember the theme...but cannot find the answer in the allotted time. Also, I often find that about the middle of each level my scores start to fall off a bit, and then improve on the final third of the level (until I hit the "conjunction of tactical motifs" section of course). So I will miss problem after problem in the middle section, but through some freak of mathmatics I will end up with a higher percentage for the level. Of course there is the occasional pleasure of getting one right that I know I have missed on prior passes, but unfortunately the sweetness of this is usually more than offset by the bitterness of missing other problems. I should probably not get too wound up about it all since the point is to learn and half of the benefit is the process itself, but it is easy to forget that. And hell, my percentages are going up and I'm doubling the number of problems I'm doing per day from pass to pass, so I guess that means I'm improving...

Scheduling
One thing I just noticed was how my schedule differs from MDLM's proposed schedule on the later problems. I originally tweaked the original MDLM schedule since I was getting killed by level 30-40 in the first circle. Now it looks like the schedule I'm using is too light in the middle, which probably explains part of why I couldn't finish the level 70+ problems on schedule in the second circle. It may be too late to try to switch to MDLM's schedule for the third circle, but I may try to do that in hopes of having fewer problems to do per day in level 70+. I'd love to go back and finish off level 70+ from the second circle, but I don't think the laws of time and space will allow that to happen.