Learning can be hard, but improvements can be as simple as brushing your teeth or indulging in your morning coffee. ☕️
That’s right; we’re talking about daily practice.
In fact, “stacking your habits” is a great way to get started building daily practice. Stacking your habits connects your new habit with something you already do every day. Read an article while you're brushing your teeth or watch a lesson while enjoying your morning coffee. I heard about someone who did pushups after every trip to the bathroom, but let's not get carried away.
In this article, let's cover six things you can do to not only become a better Blender artist but to build daily practice throughout your life.
Follow your passion ❤️
I was reading through some community forum threads and got a lot of inspirational content from our own community about what keeps them going.
I love this one from Ira Glass contributed by jgonzalez as both
a comic and
a video. The short of it is that creative people follow their passion because they have great taste, but it takes a lot of practice to get the work you create to live up to your expectations.
If you are super critical of your own work, you need to keep practicing to get your work to the caliber of your own great taste.
Share your work 👀
Other people may be critical of your work but likely far less judgmental than you are of your own stuff. It's normal to think our work is not ready yet, or I'll share once I'm better.
Don't wait.
Share your WIPs in
the gallery for a new perspective and don't forget step one, KEEP GOING!
Practice 🏋️♀️
If you learn a lot from a course and then struggle to remember those tips and tricks, the missing link in practice.
Your brain is neuroplastic. It is constantly changing based on your behavior. You can learn a skill in the short term and feel you’ve tackled it, then when you return later to try again, can’t manifest those same skills because they were lodged in your short-term improvement.
The thing that was missing was the practice of connecting those skills to your long-term memory. Long-term memory takes time.
“The primary driver of change in your brain is your behavior…nothing is more effective than practice in helping you learn.” - Dr. Lara Boyd
The European Journal of Social Psychology found the median time to create a habit is 66 days. Taking a closer look, this report also shows that everyone is different. For some people, it took 18 days and for others, it took 254.
Set your goal 🥅
So where do you want to start? As a creature of habit, how can you use habits to follow your passion and improve your skills?
We invite and encourage you to create your own personal goal, commit to it and see if you might keep going, switch on that long-term memory, and elevate your practice to your expectations.
Commit 🤝
Commit to yourself with a practice that challenges you and works for you.
For example, you can achieve at least one related task daily for a week, 2 weeks, or 30 days (66 would be killer).
This task can be as simple as reading an article, asking or answering a question in the community forum, or watching a single lesson. Score! You have already completed your first day by reading this! Combine this with daily practice to know the repetition already lives in your bones.
Reward yourself 🏆
Since long-term goals like learning Blender can take a long time before you see the reward (reward = being even more awesome), it can help to set rewards for yourself along the way.
Just like it can take months of exercise to see the change in your body, it can take a while before you begin to notice your progress as an artist. It is a great idea to reward yourself along the way. Take yourself to a movie after a week of daily practice or a spa day to reward yourself for a month of going strong.
What goal are you committing to and how will you reward yourself?
Commit to yourself by joining the daily practice goals and feel free to share what you are committing to on the community forum. I can’t wait to see what you achieve.
Let’s do this together! 🍪
(feature image: "Absorbed" by CG Cookie citizen metinseven) 
Why does this banner keep popping up every time I go to a new site? Is there any way to turn it off? It's a terrible experience for something that should have been positive
Apologies that is happening, and agreed that is not our intended experience. By chance do you have cookies disabled, or to help me troubleshoot are you seeing this experience on other browsers? Feel free to shoot me an email at support@cgcookie.com if that is helpful.