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I just realized I never shared this here, so here it is

Context: I was replying to a forum post about improvement and promotion. I ended up writing a wall of text. Thought it might help others going through same journey~

Here’s my 2cents for chasing a promotion & improving up to Diamond:

Pick one Build Order for all matchups:
Pick a safe standard opening for your race and do it across your match-ups. The reason for picking only ONE build order, is so that you can spend the rest of your thoughts/brain power on other stuff such as spending your income, not getting supply blocked etc. etc.
Having 1 build order per matchup complicates things as you may end up trying to remember what to build next half of the time if the matchup hasn’t been coming up often.

Example: (Zerg)
During my climb in ladder up till Diamond I only had one opening. 14g/14p/21h. This is a very safe opening, anyone could argue that 15h is the better economical opening and I wouldn’t disagree. But back then my mechanics/macro still needed a lot of work, and I felt there was no point for me to open economical if I’m banking 1000minerals every single game. I was better off with a safer opening, and working on my mechanics/macro from there.

Pick one composition for each matchup and stick to it:
This goes along with the first point. Fiddling with the composition that’s trending at the moment, or something that looked overpowered on a stream is actually counter productive to macro/mechanics training. Find a standard composition you’re comfortable with, and do it each game. This free’s up much of your thought process to concentrate on the mechanics/macro that really matters.

Example: (Zerg)
This is what I used from Silver -> Masters. I only started to change up and experiment after I hit Master.
ZvT - Muta/ling/bane
ZvP - Roach/hydra/corrupter
ZvZ - ling/bane/roach

Pick one mechanic at a time to work on:
As easy as it sounds to work on both worker production and not getting supply blocked, it’s actually much more complicated. In my experience, working on ONE thing at a time is much more productive and a lot faster than trying to juggle two-three foreign concepts at once. Choose 1 thing to work on, move on when you think you’ve conquered it.


Example: (Zerg)
Back in my Gold days, I felt that my biggest fallback was injects. So what I did was ONLY work on injects for about a month plus. I took it another step further and played 100 games vs very easy AI before I stepped back on the ladder. Against the AI was opening as per normal, building all the things in a normal game but watching my injects extra carefully. I’d quit game at 10minutes and start over again. Any queen with energy above 40 I’d considered a ‘failure’ of the exercise.

Don’t worry about win/lose a game.
Of course we all play this game to win, but the journey of improvement will have many losses as well and the sooner we accept that the easier time we’ll have in this journey. As White-Ra famously said “If you want to win, you must lose first.” Don’t always depict the win on who GG’d at the end of the game. Perhaps in a tournament environment that is relevant, but outside of that a win could be never getting supply blocked in the game. Or managing to scout something coming at the right time even though you didn’t successfully defend it.


Example:
I had many different ‘winning’ scenarios during my climb in ladder. During my inject training days, a win was having all my queens below 40 energy all game. During my supply block training days, zero supply block for the whole game was a win. During creep spread training, having creep closing in on the opponent base by 14min was a win. During scouting training, as long as I scouted correctly, saw everything I could see at the right time it was a win, even if my response to it was wrong and I gg’d at the end of the game.

I share this foundation because I feel that all these concepts like the Spending Quotient theory are great things to work on but are difficult to work on if you’re adding the ‘payload’ you already have in game. Choosing 1 build order, 1 composition, over time you simply develop muscle memory over the builds and your brain is truly just working on the ONE new concept, such as the Spending Quotient.

GLHF GLGL to promotion~!!