The Best Fluffy Pancakes recipe you will fall in love with. Full of tips and tricks to help you make the best pancakes.
The way to build a beauty practice that you can actually sustain is to define that practice clearly and keep it small. We don’t fail at practice because we’re lazy. We fail at practice because we define practice too broadly, too vaguely, or too loosely. We fail at practice because we sit down to work on skin layering, and brow shaping, and base, and a simple eye, and instead we do nothing at all. Because that’s too much for a single practice session, especially for a beginner. We fail at practice because we haven’t built a regular practice that is specific enough to start without questioning and consistent enough to repeat without having to rethink.
The first decision to make when building a beauty practice is not about the length of that practice; it’s about what you want to achieve in a single short practice session. A good practice session should focus on one small technique. That might mean not leaving brush strokes around the nose when applying concealer. That might mean placing blush in a generally flattering position. That might mean making sure that my brows are roughly even. Or that might mean improving the smoothness of a quick manicure. When we focus on a single small technique, we can actually make progress on it. When we practice the same movement repeatedly under the same conditions, our hand will learn faster. A big reason that we don’t see progress from our practice sessions is that we’re not focused on a single small technique, we’re spreading ourselves too thin.
A good practice session can fit into a short time, maybe fifteen minutes. Use the first few minutes to set up your mirror, your tools, and your products, so that you don’t have to dig for anything during your practice. Then, focus on one single technique and repeat it. If you’re practicing applying lipstick without jagged edges, apply your lipstick, remove it, and then reapply it, paying attention to how you make that edge. If you’re practicing skin prep, try applying the same products in the same order for a few days instead of trying a new round of products after a single use. Then use the last few minutes to observe any differences that you see. Does the finish sit better on your skin today? Does one side of your face look better than the other?
Did you get a softer line with a brush than you did with a sponge? It’s that observation that turns repetition into progress. One mistake that we often make is that we only practice when we have somewhere to go, which means that we’re practicing under the pressure of needing to look done. Practice goes better when we don’t need to aim for a full look. Another mistake is that we switch up our products too much. If my foundation pills one day and then cakes the next, I don’t know whether that’s a skin issue or a foundation issue. I need to keep the other variables constant for a few days in order to get a good gauge of what’s happening.
If something is going wrong, I should change one variable at a time and see the result, instead of changing out everything. One of the things that trips up a lot of people is that real life inevitably intrudes on even the best practice routine. The solution to that isn’t to aim for a perfect routine; it’s to aim for a flexible routine. If you have a really busy day, it’s better to focus on a single detail of your routine, like curling your lashes, or filing your nails to the right shape, than to give up altogether. And if you have a less busy day, you can still repeat that same single detail, only this time with a bit more attention. The reason that I’m able to maintain a daily practice is that I have a flexible practice that allows for a “busy day” version.
When I do have to miss a day, it’s not a huge deal because it’s easy to get back into the routine. With time, those daily little blocks will build into a kind of fluency that newbies often mistake for “talent.” The brush will sit in your hand more comfortably, you’ll use less pressure without thinking about it, you’ll notice when something is a little off balance sooner. None of that is happening because of massive efforts; it’s happening because you’ve been repeating the same small action enough times that it’s starting to feel normal.
