A lot of new woodworkers will work for hours in their shop and not get much better because they’ll work on too many different things. Measuring, cutting, sanding, assembling… It’s all great practice, but it doesn’t give you the dedicated time to really hone your skills. It’s better to dedicate time to one specific technique, and repeat it over and over until you can do it smoothly and consistently. In the beginning, it’s better to have consistency than variety.
Pick one thing you want to work on for the day, like drilling straight holes or planing a flat surface. For example, you could clamp up a scrap board and practice drilling holes while trying to hold the drill bit perfectly level. Then, you could check the back of the board to see if the holes were drilled straight. If not, you could adjust your body positioning and hand placement, then try drilling again. This kind of repetition helps you develop a sense of your body positioning, which is the most important factor in doing good work (it’s not the tools).
One big problem I see is people stopping when they do something “well enough.” When you’re working on small things, tiny flaws don’t seem like a big deal. But when you start working on bigger projects, all those little flaws add up. So instead of stopping when you do something “well enough,” repeat the action a few more times and try to do it the same way each time. Another problem I see is people rushing the setup process. It might seem boring to take the time to make perfect lines and clamp things down, but if you don’t do it, you’ll develop bad habits that are hard to break.
Even if you only have 15-20 minutes a day to practice, you can still fit in a good practice session. Take a minute or two to prepare whatever materials you need, and make any lines or marks you need to make. Then, spend the majority of your time practicing whatever it is you want to practice. Finally, take a minute to look over your work in good light and see where your edges might be off, or where your surfaces aren’t flat. Take note of anything you had trouble with so you can work on it again the next day.
It might not seem like much, but after a while, all those practice sessions will start adding up. When you’re finally able to complete a project that turns out well without having to fight it the whole time, you’ll realize that it was the dedicated practice that made you proficient… not the occasional long practice sessions.