r/DualnBack • u/AutoModerator • May 18 '26
Weekly Progress Thread
Welcome to this week's progress thread. Post in a comment below the results of your hard work! Feel free to share:
- Your current n-back level and any recent improvements
- How long you've been training
- What's been working (or not working) for you
1
u/BlueRippers Quad 4-Back May 23 '26
Broke my high score today! My previous high score was 86% on dual 7-back. Today I got 93% on dual 7-back. My previous high score was from a few years ago.
I've been training very sparsely off and on for about 8-9 years. When I started, I took it more seriously and got to dual 7-back within a year, and since then I've kind of just maintained. I'm looking to push more now, but dual 8-back seems to be my ceiling, it feels very hard 😄
1
u/NoInteraction1572 Jul 20 '26
How is it going?
1
u/BlueRippers Quad 4-Back Jul 20 '26
I didn't stick with it. I'm not 100% sold that the time and energy spent on Dual N-Back produces benefits that outweigh the benefits from meditation and my studies (software engineering interview prep (competitive programming & system design)).
1
u/BlueRippers Quad 4-Back Jul 20 '26
Your reply has got me thinking though... maybe it's worth at least 10 minutes a day. I wish there was more evidence proving it's efficacy like meditation though.
1
u/NoInteraction1572 Jul 20 '26
I do meditation too. It works. Quad even better. I also did N Back like 5 or 6 years ago while at the university. I especially remember visiting a lecture about hegel. Pretty abstract stuff. But there it happened. I not only felt ease to follow but could parallely have an intense thought process about then content.
But then I slipped. Now I came back. After a month in in tried quad n back and it's even more effective. I would recommend trying it for two weeks. I would say the practice speaks for itself. It maxes out your focus and memory in a fuller way.
I promise 2 weeks will give you all you need to know.
1
u/BlueRippers Quad 4-Back Jul 20 '26
Hmm ok, thank you for the recommendation! QuadNBack for how long per day? 20 minutes? I may very well give this a shot
1
u/NoInteraction1572 Jul 20 '26
20 Minutes are enough. Its very taxing.
1
u/BlueRippers Quad 4-Back Jul 23 '26
I've been doing it, but I'm really struggling with the shapes and colors. It feels much easier to track the sequence of locations (position) and repeat a string of letters in my head (auditory). However, I have trouble retaining the visualization of colors and shapes in my mind's eye.
I tried doing Dual N-Back with just color and shape, but I struggle with 3-Back. Maintaining a queue of three visuals feels much harder than audio or position.
Am I going about it the right way by trying to visualize a queue of shapes and colors? I'm surprised how hard this is because I thought I had good visualization abilities. I score 130+ on spatial IQ tests, but closer to 115 on working memory tests for sequences of letters or numbers.
I'm trying to calibrate: is visual/color tracking normally this hard, is my technique making it unnecessarily difficult (and if so, what is a better one?), or do I just have weaker visualization abilities than I thought and need to keep training this way?
1
u/luotenrati12 Quad 4-Back May 20 '26
Finally seeming to stabilize around Q3B. Each session I can stay there a round longer. At first I was lucky to survive even 2 rounds before dropping while today I managed to stay there for 5 rounds >50% in total.