26 Busy Lives and Comebacks
Training with a busy life
Tonehh now works a nine-to-five, plays four to six hours a week, and still sets top plays, often by accident. His system: 6
- Reserve a time slot, not an hours quota. He keeps his evenings free for osu! but lets each session be as long as it turns out to be. Quotas make the game feel like a job.
- Match the session to the time you have. With 30 minutes, play your weakest skill set, where improvement comes fastest; for him that's Hidden or Easy.
- Make room for some long sessions. About two hours is where real improvement happens, after a 10 to 13 minute warm-up.
- Treat days off as a feature. Rest resets the body and gives the brain time to adapt.
- One-trick, then rotate. Spend most of your playtime on one skill set for a week or a month, then move on when you get bored.
Tonehh’s take
- Reserve a time slot instead of setting hour targets. Supported. Habits form through repetition in a consistent context, and missing a single day didn't materially slow habit formation in a real-world study (median 66 days to automaticity, with a range of 18 to 254). 6,149
- Short sessions go to your weakest skill. Supported. Practice curves are steepest early, so the least-trained skill improves fastest per minute. 124
- Real improvement needs some sessions of about two hours. Experience-based. His warm-up estimates vary between videos (10 to 13 minutes here, about 30 in his derusting guide); research suggests the post-rest dip clears with a short block of task-specific play. 16,144
- Days off help. Supported. Sleep consolidates motor skills, and spaced practice beats massed. 102,103
Derusting
After four years away, Tonehh fell from about 6,000 to 22,000 and regained most of his skill in weeks while playing less than before. His process: 16
- Get comfortable with your current setup first, especially if your desk, chair, or peripherals changed.
- Accept that you'll be worse for a while, and drop to a star rating you can read, aim, and tap properly, ideally one where a full combo takes only a couple of tries. He dropped from high 6 and low 7 stars to low 5, under 200 BPM.
- Read intentionally; lazy habits formed now become long-term problems.
- Play for full combos again; the hunger to remove misses is a skill in itself.
- Sightread new maps, including unranked ones, instead of replaying old favorites.
- Don't try to derust fast. Watching your speed adds pressure and tempts shortcuts like pp farming.
- Set a direction: goals, favorite players, maps you want.
- Count small objective gains: a B becoming an A, a first pass, a higher comfortable BPM.
- Use the reset to learn new things and fix old habits while your muscle memory is fresh.
Tonehh’s take
- Derusting is fast because part of your skill never leaves. Supported. Relearning shows savings, and physical and speed skills decay less than cognitive or accuracy skills. 120,122
- The less you think about derusting fast, the faster you derust. Experience-based. It fits his broader rule that pressure and tunnel vision slow improvement.
Tonehh’s take
- The greats started with fundamentals. Experience-based. In his 2026 return video he notes that several all-time great players' early top plays were mostly nomod consistency maps and TV-size jump maps harder than today's, with early experiments in mods; one started out playing only Hidden. 17
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