Skill Progress or Technique Progress

September—time to open the list I made at the start of the year. The crossed-out items look clean and decisive, but a lingering doubt creeps in: Is this real progress? Or did I just get by with a few clever tricks, barely scraping through the tasks?

We all know that optimization has no end. Yet along the way, tempting shortcuts appear—deadlines push us to compromise, ROI calculations shake our resolve. Once we give in, these shortcuts become fleeting comforts that fail the moment the context changes.

Real progress, perhaps, isn’t about how many items are crossed off the list, but about what settles in your mind. For instance, when facing a similar problem, you recall the pitfalls from last time and reuse past experience. It’s like a cycle: plan, execute, check, act. Each iteration leaves behind new reference points, making the next round clearer in direction and steadier in stride. That kind of accumulation is what truly moves you forward.

Those little tricks that merely “polish the numbers”—flashy on the surface, hollow inside. They reveal their true nature the moment the goal changes.

Large language models have taken the world by storm this year; almost everyone is talking about them. But where they’ll ultimately lead, no one can say for sure. It could be a complete transformation, or just a passing fad. What we can do, perhaps, is maintain a healthy dose of skepticism and focus on what won’t easily become obsolete: logic, principles, and ways of thinking.

Three months—not long, but enough. The list will gradually fade, the check marks will blur, but the abilities that truly stick will keep working in the next cycle. You can cross items off the list, but the road still lies ahead.