THE 480

A system for teaching yourself one thing at a time.

Self-directed learning does not fail from lack of motivation. It fails from lack of accounting. You cannot tell whether you are ahead or behind — so, eventually, you assume the worst and quit.

This is the instrument that tells you.

480 hours is the unit: twelve weeks full-time, six months at eighteen hours a week, a year at nine. Same block of work, three different lives. You pick the road; the arithmetic tells you whether you are on it.

What you get

• The manual (35pp, PDF, A4 and US Letter) — how to design a cycle, run it, read the pace, and know the difference between being behind and being finished.
• The tracker (Excel + Google Sheets) — six sheets. Log your hours; it computes your variance, your sustained rate, the rate you now need, and the date you will actually finish if nothing changes.
• The Cycle Brief — a one-page printable. Fill it in by hand before you touch the spreadsheet.

Who it's for Anyone teaching themselves something hard, outside an institution, with no one checking. Autodidacts. Career-changers. People working through OSSU, or Spivak, or a language, or a subject they've been circling for two years.

Who it is not for

• People looking for motivation. This system is indifferent to how you feel.
• People who want to be told what to study. That decision is yours; the system has no opinion.
• People who want a beautiful planner. This one is deliberately plain, and the plainness is a design position.
• People who will not log their hours truthfully. It's a mirror, and a mirror is worthless to someone determined to stand at an angle.

Roughly $23. Five files. Instant download. Single-user licence; the tracker is yours to break.