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It is quite common for beauty practice to plateau. Sometimes for a few days, things seem to go more smoothly: your eyeliner looks straighter, your skin is better prepped, and your nail polish stays in its bed. Then suddenly things seem awkward again. That doesn’t mean you are necessarily doing anything wrong. It might mean that your eye is developing ahead of your execution. You can see the imperfections that were there all along, but now they are more apparent. This can be discouraging, but it is a valuable indicator. You develop your critical faculties before you develop your technical skill.
When practice stagnates, the first variable to tweak is the scope of the task. A full face of makeup, a full set of nails, or a full hair style can mask where, exactly, the problem occurs. Narrow the scope and focus on one technique. If you can never seem to blend your foundation, spend a few practice sessions on prepping your skin and blending foundation. If you can never seem to get your eyeshadow right, spend a few sessions practicing how to apply one mid-tone color before you add crease colors or highlight. If you can never seem to keep your nail polish off your cuticles, spend a few sessions practicing how to manage the brush at a good angle and with the right amount of pressure without worrying about which color to use. The smaller the scope, the easier it is to diagnose the problem, because the problem has fewer places to hide.
One of the most common errors in practice, when stuck on a plateau, is to add more elements to the practice. Beginners will often try to fix the problem by creating a more dramatic look, incorporating more products, or practicing for a longer amount of time. More often than not, the better fix is to simplify. Use fewer products and repeat a more basic technique, paying close attention to one particular step. Perhaps the brush you are using is too big for the detail work you want to accomplish. Perhaps you haven’t given your skin care enough time to absorb before applying makeup. Perhaps you aren’t checking for symmetry soon enough, and are already over-working one side. When the results aren’t good, don’t chalk it up to chance. There is probably a pattern, but you have to slow down and look for it.
One of my favorite practice blocks is about 15 minutes long and works particularly well during the plateau phase. The first three minutes are spent identifying one technique that has been problematic. The next six minutes are spent repeating that technique in its most reduced form, just one eyebrow, one cheek, one nail, or one section of hair, for example. Then three minutes are spent evaluating both sides, or evaluating before-and-after attempts, in a fixed light. Finally, spend a few moments quietly adjusting, focusing on making one adjustment. The structure is important here, because it keeps the practice session from devolving into random attempts.
Getting feedback, when working through a plateau, is vital, but it must be specific. “That doesn’t look right” isn’t going to help you very much. “You’re putting the blush too low,” “You’re making the front of the brow too heavy,” or “You’re letting the polish get too wide at the tip of the nail” will give you something you can actually work with. If you don’t have the advantage of outside feedback, learn to use your mirror more effectively. Step back and evaluate the full face before evaluating the details. Take a picture, wait an hour, and evaluate again with fresh eyes. Sometimes distance will reveal an imbalance that you can’t see when you’re standing close.
Most plateaus in beauty practice are sorting phases, not failures. Your hands are figuring out how to maneuver, your eyes are figuring out what to look for, and it takes time for those two skills to catch up with each other. Stay with one issue long enough to figure out what it is. Increased precision rarely comes with great fan-fare. Most of the time, it just quietly appears, in the form of cleaner lines, more stable placement, and fewer mid-course corrections.
