How much have you learned?

Edwin is working on his French vocabulary using the Leitner method. But there's a lag in that system - and any system - for tracking between what you've actually learned and what you're just trying to learn. His solution is to stop tracking for how much he's learned according to the different levels (or decks, as it were), and resolve instead to keep growing the stock of words he's learning at a steady rate.

When they drag out the old saw about "it's the journey, not the destination," it doesn't quite fit with language learning. Because the journey is all there is. If you're not born a native speaker, you'll never be a native speaker. You may be in practice well enough to pass for one in a lot of interactions, but even at that, the lacunae in your knowledge will be in the wrong places. For example, you may know that TNT is what we say for high-energy explosives in general, and that it refers specifically to trinitrotoluene. But do you know what it means if someone complains that their sweater got "all wuzzled up" and now it looks funny? This is not to discourage, but simply to point out that this is a long-term effort. So pick an approach that will keep you moving forward, not one where you're focused on when you can stop. This is, I think, what Edwin has done.