(This probably applies to a lot of rhythm games, but NotITG is the one I've been playing. There's a point to this post beyond rhythm games.)

NotITG is a very "raw" game, if that makes sense? Like, you have a collection of charts each with a difficulty rating (mostly) from 1-20, you can play one and get a score. That's pretty much it! The charts don't even unlock based on your performance or anything*, you just have access to whatever you download. And that's interesting because games usually have some sort of finely tuned difficulty curve, or skill-based matchmaking, so whatever you're doing at any given time is always a reasonable-ish challenge for your current skill level. In NotITG there's none of that, you can start with a 19 difficulty chart and score a 0, or go back to easier charts that you once struggled to clear and go for 100%. But mostly, slowly take on harder and harder charts and set new personal bests point by point as you improve.

The only other thing I can think of that quantifies your skill in such a precise numeric way is elo. But you can't feel elo, by nature any game with a system like it is going to be matching you against people with similar skill, so your hundredth game feels just as tough as your tenth. It's fun to watch the number go up but, in my experience, it's hard to notice that I'm actually getting better. In NotITG though, there's no shifting baseline, the charts are always the same, so when I'm getting better, it's obvious. It's not just setting new high scores almost every time I play: what once seemed impossible becomes just barely doable, what once was genuinely tough seems almost easy.

NotITG is also pretty hard. The difficulty scale for charts goes from 1-20, and just starting out I think the most I could handle was like, a 3. I think I'm about 100 hours in and the last chart I've cleared was a slightly tricker than average 10. Am I "good" at the game now? Maybe, but I've definitely come a long way, and have a long way to go.

Now this is the part of the post where I get to my point: this experience is making me actually believe all that stuff people keep saying about getting better at things. If you want to get good at anything you really do just kind of have to start terrible and be pretty bad at it for a long time! NotITG has like two things you need to learn (what the note colours mean and how to emulate playing on pad with a keyboard) but if you've got that down the rest is just practice. And with practice you improve.

Probably could have worked this one out by picking like any skill and getting better at that instead, but I think NotITG is fun and that's a good motivator. I didn't set out to go on this journey of discovering how improving at things works, it just kind of happened by accident. And now that you know this you don't have to play a rhythm game first and can skip straight to the part where you learn how to draw, or whatever it is that you've been meaning to learn how to do.

* okay, technically I think this is actually a feature, but barely anybody uses it