Good Pilots Have a Habit of Training

How To Form a Sustainable Training Habit That Makes You a Better Pilot

Developing sustainable habits as a pilot is essential for achieving your flying goals. However, becoming a proficient pilot can be daunting, and it is one of the primary reasons why proficiency plans fall by the wayside by early February each year. Instead of pressuring yourself to become proficient, it is better to focus on developing a productive new training habit that pays off over time. Here are some simple changes you can make to become a better pilot every day.

Ditch the All-or-Nothing Mentality

It is essential to ditch the all-or-nothing mentality for your proficiency training. Proficiency training used to involve hour-long sessions in an airplane where you self-prescribe tasks and maneuvers to help you stay sharp. However, with the availability of educational content at our fingertips, improving your aeronautical knowledge and skills has never been easier. On days when you cannot make it to the airport, spend a few minutes reading articles or watching videos about flying from reputable sources. Additionally, if you have a flight simulator at home, use it to challenge your aeronautical decision-making (ADM) and keep your stick and rudder skills sharp. By doing this, not only will you supplement your time in the airplane, but it will also help keep you on track during busy weeks.

Set Smaller Training Objectives

Setting smaller training objectives will help you avoid burnout as you work towards achieving your broader goals. First, make your new training habit easy to accomplish. As weeks and months pass, the minutes you dedicate to your training on a daily basis will add up to a consistent habit, and you will become a more proficient pilot.

Use Cues to Prompt your Training Time

Identify a time of day when you like to train and set up reminders to help you get started. You can set an alarm on your phone or tablet, enable push notifications for training apps you use, or lay out your flight bag where you will see it. This approach, called habit stacking, helps you form a new habit by taking advantage of the work you already put into forming old ones.

Train Every Day

Finally, it is crucial to train every day. Daily repetition will help you develop your new training habit as quickly as possible. However, forming a habit can take much longer than the myth propagated over the years that it takes only 21 days. A study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology found that it can take anywhere from 18 to 254 days. Regardless of how fast you adopt the habit, you should consider a shift to the daily betterment of your flying to be a permanent lifestyle change. Your skills on the flight deck, particularly ADM, atrophy quickly when you do not exercise them regularly. Your daily training habit is the first step in a lifelong journey to becoming the best pilot possible.