Who this is for
You have completed courses. Several, possibly many. You have certificates, or at least completion percentages. And when you try to actually do the thing, you find you cannot — or you can only do it while following along with someone.
This is not a discipline problem. It is a structural one: courses are designed to be completable, and completability requires removing the parts that make real work hard. The dataset is clean. The environment is configured. The problem has a known solution. Every one of those removals is exactly the thing you need practice at.
This template is for converting consumed material into capability.
The branches
What I can do only while following along. The honest inventory. Things you have "learned" but have never done from a blank start, without the video paused beside you. Almost everyone underestimates how much sits here, and finding out is the point of the branch.
One thing built from nothing. Not a course project. Something you chose, with no instructions, where you have to decide what it even is. Small is fine — small is better. The unstructured start is the specific capability courses cannot teach, because a course by definition supplies the structure.
Where I get stuck without instructions. Populated by attempting the branch above. What actually stops you: not knowing where to begin, not knowing whether your approach is reasonable, not being able to diagnose an error, not knowing what "good" looks like. Each needs a different fix, and you cannot know which apply until you have been stuck.
The fundamentals I skipped. Every course-taught skill has holes — the theory that was abstracted away, the setup step that was pre-done, the concept the instructor waved past. They compound and eventually cap you. This branch fills up naturally from the previous one, which is a far better source than a syllabus.
Feedback that is not a grade. Course assessment tells you whether you followed instructions. It does not tell you whether the thing is any good. A person, a community, a working test, a real user — something with an opinion that is not scored against a rubric.
Evidence someone outside could examine. The finished thing, not the certificate. This is what converts "I did a course" into something that has value to anyone else, and it is the branch most course-collectors never reach.
How to use it
Import it and mark "one thing built from nothing" as Focus immediately. Do not start with the fundamentals branch — that is another form of consuming, and it will expand to fill all available time because there is always more theory.
The dependency runs one way: attempting produces the stuck-list, and the stuck-list produces the real fundamentals list. Trying to work the fundamentals first inverts it and stalls.
Set a real Deadline on the first build only if you need one to start. Otherwise leave dates off — the map should not become another completion percentage.
What to add once it is yours
Name the actual courses, the actual skill, the actual thing you are going to build. Be specific about the "only while following along" branch; vagueness there is a form of avoidance.
Attach Proof to the built thing, including early bad versions. A branch cannot be marked Proven without evidence, and here that is the whole point — a certificate is not proof of capability, and this template exists because the two got confused.
Signs it is working
- Something exists that you made without instructions
- The stuck-list is specific rather than general anxiety
- Your fundamentals list came from failing, not from a syllabus
- Someone who is not grading you has looked at your work
Signs it is not
- You started another course
- The build branch has not been attempted, but the fundamentals branch is growing
- Everything you have made followed someone else's steps
- You are waiting to feel ready before building anything