Real life is full of Kaizo blocks
One technique I have to admit to developing for passing short periods of time is watching clips of skilled Mario players streaming on twitch/youtube (e.g. this guy is a good demonstration). I'm also a sucker for informational theories, in particular the asymmetry of knowledge: How you gain information ('learn') is very different from how you lose it ('forget'). At the intersection of Mario and Information systems is a thing called the Kaizo block. What is it? For some background, Kaizo ('reorganized') Mario is a name that originated from an early hacked version of Mario that upped the difficulty substantially, and is now associated with many of the more complicated mechanics. One in particular can be seen above: a Kaizo block is one that starts off invisible, and only appears when you hit it. Often placed in the most inconvenient locations, they force much more precise movement, but also are very easily hit the first time through when its exist...