6 Steps to Improve Your Skills

When people ask others for tips on becoming a better player, they get very general, unspecific responses. How does this really help someone genuinely trying to improve? When someone is told that, will they just keep playing over and over and hope for the best? You can be in control of your improvement. When one asks how they can get better, they are often told:

• "Practice makes perfect."
• "Just think about what you're doing."
• "Practice your fundamentals."
• "Play over and over and you'll get better."
• "You'll get better with experience. Don't worry. It will come in time."

They're all encouraging words, but it can be hard to act on them and get results. Sometimes, you get more specific answers. Those are few and far between, and usually lead nowhere because the person asking for help doesn't even know where to start! The problem with a lot of these responses is that it leaves your improvement to chance. Leaving things to chance is NEVER the way to go. In this article, I'll be writing a step-by-step process on improving your skills one by one. But before I begin, we must know that any improvement begins with realizing that you are doing something wrong and it needs to change.

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
-Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein would kick your ass in any game he plays because he knows how to improve.

(Picture Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein)

You must realize that doing the same thing over and over again will result in the same thing. If one strategy does not work, you must adapt. If you lose, but change nothing about the way you play, you can never hope to improve. We have all had times where we say one of the following statements:

• "I should have done X."
• "I can't believe I did X."
• "X seemed like a good idea..."
• "How could I have made a simple mistake as X."

Replace the X's with your favorite mistake. Instead of "remembering" them and keeping them in mind, these X's should be recorded. I used to keep a notebook the mistakes I made whenever I played. After pages and pages of games and faults, I scanned the notebook for mistakes that I commonly made. When I found my common mistakes, I put them all on one page and decided to do something about them.

In this article, I will use myself as an example and how I improved. In the past, I struggled with mouse control. I was constantly missing skills I shouldn't have missed. I constantly clicked in the wrong place, and missed opportunities I shouldn't have missed. I set aside an hour everyday to practice. These are the steps I took. Recently, I bought a new computer and I have to work on it again. The resolution on this monitor is DRASTICALLY different from my old one, and I have to get used to it. I lost my records from my previous endeavor and will be sharing my current progression. And without further ado...

THE SIX STEPS TO IMPROVE YOUR SKILLS

1. Find a weakness to focus on
2. Rationalize your training
3. Find a way to improve
4. Set time aside
5. Track your progress
6. Work and reflect

1. Find a weakness to focus on.

If you don't focus on your mistakes one-by-one, you will leave your improvement to chance. If you just keep playing the game believing that you will get better in time, you are right. The keyword in your belief is "in time." You are giving control of your improvement to something other than yourself. By giving it to time, you don't know when you will improve. You don't know how much you improved. You don't know how it will happen. You just know that time will give it to you eventually. Take matters into your own hands and make your improvement happen.

While playing over and over again will result in improvement, it leaves things to chance. What if you have a game where your mistakes don't matter and you still win? What if the game you're playing doesn't require you to focus on the mistakes that you have? For those reading who play sports competitively, you understand that improvement comes a step at a time. You didn't get better by simply playing over and over again. Though it helped, I'm sure you also spent time improving your skills individually. If you focus on one task at a time, your skill in that task will improve at a fast rate and you will be able to focus on other tasks after that.

After logging my mistakes, I realized the things I needed to focus on the most. Too many times, I saw that I missed skills because I couldn't click the target. I also missed some skills because I aimed them incorrectly because I overshot/undershot with my mouse pointer. These mistakes are unforgivable and I had to do something about it. I chose to focus on this.

2. Rationalize your training

Find many reasons why you need to improve this skill. Find many reasons why NOT improving will lead to your downfall. By rationalizing your training, you further motivate yourself to do what you need to do. These reasons will push you to learn what you're trying to learn. It will also make you realize why what you are focusing on is important. Maybe in the future, you can communicate these things with others who are also trying to improve themselves.

Some of my reasons for working to improve my mouse control:

1. I will be able to click what I need to, when I need to with confidence.
2. I have an urge to win, so I must be able to take every opportunity easily and precisely.

What will happen if I don't improve my mouse control:

1. I will keep missing my skills. By missing my skills, I miss opportunities. By missing opportunities, I have lost the game for myself.
2. I will be too busy focusing on using my mouse to focus on more important aspects of the game.
3. I will keep losing games because I missed too many skills. Mistakes add up and actually amount to something.

These two lists are a few of my reasons why I work to improve my mouse control. I have MANY more, but there is no need to go through every single one of them. Find reasons for your own improvement, and you will successfully improve in anything you focus on.

3. Find a way to improve

Take some time to figure out ways you can improve your skills. Also take the time to find ways people improved if they're having the same problems as you are. Their methods can probably work for you. When you find something you can do that SPECIFICALLY trains the skill you are looking for, remember it and try it. If you feel like the method you found is beneficial, stick with it and move to the next step.

I looked online for ways people improved their mouse control. I found this forum post that gives three ways of improving mouse control. I chose one of them and stuck to it. It had a way that I could monitor my progress and it was challenging. I could also do it for either a short period of time or a long period of time, which allowed flexibility.

A Wonderful Article on TeamLiquid's forum about Improving Mouse Control

4. Set time aside

Know how much time you will set aside for your work. Maybe you'll work on improving for 30 minutes a day. Maybe you'll work on improving for an hour a day. Work on it for a week. Work on it for two weeks. It doesn't matter. Make a reasonable commitment that you will be able to fulfill. Also make sure that your commitment will yield results. If you are going to work on something for only 30 minutes everyday, make sure you work on it for a while so you see results. You can only take out as much as you put in. Something for nothing has yet to be discovered.

I set aside an hour a day to improve my mouse control. Before I played a game, I practiced my mouse control for an hour. Some days that I had more time, I set aside even more. Since I had a reason to improve, I had no problem in setting aside extra time in a day if I had it.

5. Track your progress.

To make sure you aren't aimlessly working, track your progress somehow. Keep a paper, a spreadsheet, a sticky note, or anything that you can write information on to keep track of how you are doing. If you can, also take notes on how you can practice even harder. Take notes on what helps you and what doesn't help you. It will allow you to further focus and get more out of your practice sessions and in your games in the future.

Whenever I practiced, I kept track of what I was doing in my sessions. To practice, I chose a game that challenged my mouse precision. As I said earlier, it had measures of accuracy and difficulty so I could see how much progress I was making. In just one day, I made progress. In my spreadsheet, I noted every variable I found useful. I also took notes on what helped me succeed in my practice sessions. Have a look in the link below for an example of how to track your progress.

Here is the spreadsheet I used to track my progress

6. Work and reflect

As you work, think about your improvement. Are you really improving? Do the records you're taking show slight improvement? Do games you play out of practice show your improvement? If the answer to these questions is yes, you are doing good work. Remember what you are doing well. Keep doing what you're doing and keep finding ways to improve. If the answer is no, then maybe you need to go back to Step 3 and find a different way. As Einstein said, don't do the same thing over and over expecting different results.

Reflection helped me find MORE reasons why I was practicing mouse control. I thought about what I was doing and how it could help in my gameplay. It kept me going on my work and it helped me write this article to help everyone else who either might be having trouble improving or help those already good at this by making them better.

Thank you for reading. I would love to hear improvement stories or anything. I write to inspire people to be better and I hope I accomplished that here. :) Happy gaming.