SMS Year In Review: 2020

overall, a mixed year. i started on 16th jan 2020 with a goal for any%, but soon pivoted towards individual levels, which were at first for practice but soon became my outlet for pushing myself to perform at the peak of my ability

this is actually at odds with my original mindset for any%, which was to get consistent by practising and then do runs with mindfulness and passive focus (i.e. trying to not have conscious thought but being present in the run). i didn't get a chance to rly explore that tho since it took so long to learn the game, and i've barely reached the point where i can passively focus in any%, and i think it's still detrimental vs active focus cos i'm nowhere near consistent enough

it's hard to say if my practice method was unoptimal for any% because long-term, both of these aspects (peak performance and consistent repetition) are bottlenecks. but certainly, i did put a lot of time into ils for fun that aren't useful for any%, as well as the task (custom il) competition, so i have a mixed bag of achievements to show for it.

any% is at 1:31:17, which if i'd bothered to optimise at my current skill would still only come out to 1:28:00-ish. it's not completely clear why it's still so bad relative to ILs and effort, but the path to improvement is clear enough so it'll just be a new task i set myself to sort it out. i think problems with consistency of baseline movement are what holds me back, which is disappointing since the progression of movement ils was intended to solidify that. the original goal when i started out was sub-1:20 by this time.

ils, i was able to get some things off:
– an il for all but 2 (?) any% levels, mostly competent (30%–70% quality range) save for some non-standard ones like bianco 2, pianta 6, sirena 1+6, which are all <20% lol;
– a few very-short execution-heavy levels in the 70%–90%;
– consistency progressed enough for decent results at full-level secret ils (mostly ~60%).
overall, 2000pts at 47% quality. nothing much to compare with or expect, lots of peeps still sleeping on ils in general, but seems sound.

here's a link to my personal il ranking as of new year's day in england ^ · ^
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/529145099003887618/798347652235657266/unknown.png