How to measure my progress

In the last days I thought about the question how I can measure my progress.
After all the playchess rating is just a blitz rating. I do not have the time at the moment to play a lot of real tournaments so the progress is quite difficult to measure. So I decided to compare the improvement that I hopefully achieve measured by different methods.
My rating at playchess was 1538 when I started the program. My rating on the chess tactics server was 1450 and my Fritz rating was 1735 after 20 games (blitz).

First post

I learned chess long ago and was always interested in the game. But although I played a few years in a local chess club I did not really train to improve my game. So after two and a half years in the club I stopped playing chess for over a decade and had a rating of about 1550 at that time. I bought a lot of chess books since then to study and understand the game one day but I actually did not read the books. Two month ago I began playing at playchess and my rating there was about 1300 at first. That is just bad. So I started a program to improve my rating. First step in this program is tactical training. And instantly after starting that training I began getting better. I already have improved my rating at playchess to 1539 and when I played against Fritz yesterday I had no problems with the 1680 level that has always been really hard for me before. Instead of coming out with a fritz rating of about 1580 I won 4 of 6 and even in the two games I lost I had material advantage during the game and good winning chances. So I think I am already a stronger chess player than I have ever been. After the first successes I started to intensify my tactical training and now want to do a program a la Michael de la Maza. I already did the first two levels in the first circle. Keeping up this blog shall motivate me to really do the whole program till the end. And of course I hope to improve my chess considerably. Well, I still have to decide if I do the last two circles.
The success rates of the first levels are:
L10: 96 %
L20: 90 %