I’m a software engineer learning Chinese. I started learning two years ago. First streak was 300+ days. My current attempt is 250+ daily lessons and counting. It’s a comforting illusion.

In this blog I'm going to break out of the neat bubble fed by some of the popular language apps and start building a system that pushes me to make real progress instead of just making me feel good.

The problem with "a lesson a day" is that it's totally not enough. I need a system. I'll start with vocabulary learning and tracking my progress.

• Target specific vocabulary. HSK 2026 levels 1-3: 1000 words in total.
• Break vocabulary into fixed groups of 15 words each. Brain loves structure.
• Use a smart spaced-repetition algorithm to decide which group to drill next.
• Start with a set of 5-6 groups, add more upon memorization.
• Track how many unique words I have learnt over time.
• Track how much time I'm devoting on a daily basis.

I started with the new system two weeks ago. At the time of writing this blog post, as I already have some basic knowledge, I quickly drilled through the first 20 groups. You can see my daily activity in the heatmap below, it's clickable.

Currently, I count 10 reps of a group as mastery and 1 rep as progress. This is the overall progress for the whole HSK 2026 levels 1-3:

System cannot be static. It should evolve with the learning progress itself. To make the system work for me, instead of me struggling with it I have created this web app.

It helps me pick a set of groups to drill, practice both writing and pinyin, and track learning statistics automatically.

Hopefully I will not be too carried away with the system itself, and use it wisely to accelerate my learning progress.