How I measure my learning
The one single metric that I use is actually, the time I spend learning the language. I believe that the time spent learning the actual language (not about the language or just the vocabularies or just the set of rules and grammar drills etc) is directly proportional to the ability to understand that language. As long as you're doing the right thing, showing up everyday, no matter what resource you use (beginner materials, children books, novels) you will gain something from that. Just be consistent, and be patient.
You can actually use anything to track your time, as simple as a timer or a stopwatch (which you can find anywhere now; google, your phone, etc) then after you finish, write down the total time somewhere you can keep track of, like a spreadsheet or a simple notepad, you can basically use anything really. But, for ease of use, I personally use a website called Toggl. I knew this from Refold. It has many features but I don't actually need most of it. I only use the timer and the visualization feature.
As you can see from this image, I can just click the project which I want to track the time of, and when I'm finished I'll just stop the timer and it will record the time. It's really motivating to see the numbers go up every time. And you see there are also some remnants of my dabbled languages 😂.
On the Reports page, you can see your weekly performance so you can judge how consistent you've been. Honestly, since I can't do anything on weekends I aim to spend 2 hours per day so I can still reach 10 hours per week, but I think I'm still not able to reach that and will just go with 1 hour per day (≈5 hours per week). It's slow but hopefully I'll get there someday!
And as you can see on the first image above, I actually just today reached 50 hours! 🎉 It's actually not much if you see other learners who have spent hundreds or even thousands of hours, they're insane I can't even imagine having that much time lol 😂 But yeah it's still a big achievement for me so I might as well celebrate!
Anyway I think that's all for today. See you next time!