30-day plan to move up in medal, without training more hours

The slowest way to improve in Dota is to try to improve on everything. Last hit, vision, items, positioning, communication, all at the same time, in every match. It's what almost everyone does, and that's why almost everyone locks for months in the same lane playing the same amount of hours.

What works is the opposite: one target at a time, ten matches per target, and one review per week. This guide is the script we use with the student, written for you to run on your own.

He doesn't ask for more hours. He asks that the hours you already play have a target.

The rule that organizes the 30 days

On each medal bracket there is a mistake that dominates the result. It costs so many games that the others added together don't come close. Fixing this mistake alone moves you from one lane to another; fixing everything but it doesn't move anything.

So the structure is this:

1. Discovering your dominant mistake (day 1).
2. Attack one target per week, measuring only it.
3. Review one replay per week, with a written question.
4. On the 30th, redo the diagnosis.

Day 1: the diagnosis

Open your last five losses. For each one, answer only one question in writing:

At what minute did this game stop being winnable, and what was I doing at that minute?

Don't write "the team played badly." Write down what you were doing: where you were, what you were clicking, if you were alive.

If in four of the five you were in the same situation (dead out of position, farming far from what was happening, defending a tower that fell anyway), you found your dominant mistake. Write it in a short, specific sentence: don't "play better," but "don't cross the river without vision after minute 15."

If you don't know how to read replay yet, start with how to analyze your own replay. It's twenty minutes of reading and solves the rest of the month.

Week 1: Territory

The target: stop defending what should not be defended.

What to read: Never defend your safe lane and when to use TP scroll.

What to do in games: Every time your hand goes to the defense TP, count to three and say out loud what you're buying with it. If the answer is "stop a tower from falling," don't use it.

What to measure: At the end of each match, how many defensive TPs you used. The goal isn't zero: it's to know the number.

Week 2: Farm cycle and map

The target: to change the fixed farm lane for territory decision.

What to read: big jungle and farming cycle and your position guide (the series starts at the five positions in Dota 2).

What to do in the matches: every two minutes, between minute 12 and 25, mentally answer: *what is the next piece of map where I have safe farm for the next 60 seconds?* If the answer is "none", this is the time to force the map with the team, not to keep walking.

What to measure: In the replay, look at minutes 12 to 25 and count how many you could name the territory you were contesting.

Week 3: information

The goal: to transform vision into decision.

What to read: wards and vision and before you hit the smoke.

What to do in matches: Before planting any wards, answer what piece of map your team will use in the next few minutes. If you're a core, buy at least one observer per match when the supports are dead.

What to measure: how many times per match did you say "what I saw and what it allows". Five is already above average.

Week 4: Brawl Pick

The target: only to fight on favorable terms.

What to read: Play as if the enemy had Aegis andRoshan: when to do it and when not to.

What to do in the games: before each fight, answer if there is an objective on the other side of it. Tower, Roshan, territory, wave. If there isn't, it's a fight that is only good for those who were already in front.

What to measure: In the replay, count the fights in which the ownership of territory or building changed. The others were free.

What to do every Sunday

Thirty minutes, always the same:

1. Choose a match of the week. Preferably a narrow defeat, which teaches more than ugly defeat.
2. Watch the minutes that matter, not the entire match: the lane to 10, and the two scoreboards.
3. Write down three sentences: what you did well, the mistake that was repeated, and the next week's goal.

Writing is the part that almost no one does and the one that makes a difference. A mistake that you don't name comes back.

Day 30: Redo the diagnosis

Repeat the exercise from day 1 with the five most recent losses. Two things can happen, and both are good:

• The dominant mistake has changed. You have solved the previous one. Start another thirty-day cycle with the new one.
• The dominant error is the same. It's deeper than it seemed, and next week's target is a more specific version of it.

What can't happen is that you don't know how to answer. If you don't know, the problem wasn't the training: it was that you didn't measure anything during the month.

The Four Objections That Always Appear

"Thirty days is not enough to move up the belt." Maybe it is, and the target is not the belt: it's the mistake. The belt is a consequence and it comes in its time. What thirty days guarantee is that you know, on the 30th, something about your game that you didn't know on day 1. This accumulates; hours played without a target don't.

"I don't have time to watch replays." Thirty minutes a week. It's less than one game. And if the choice is between playing one more game or reviewing one, reviewing yields more, because the more game repeats the mistake and the review names it.

"My problem is the team, not me." It can be, in isolated matches. It can't be in fifty: in fifty matches the random teams balance each other, and what is left is you. The exercise of day 1 is precisely the test of this: if in four of the five defeats you were in the same situation, the pattern is yours.

"I already know all that." Knowing and executing are different things, and the plan is about the second. The question that resolves the objection: can you say, now, how many defensive TPs you used in your last game? If you can't, you know the rule and don't measure behavior, which is exactly what this month will change.

About playing less

One last thing, and it's the one that returns the most MMR: stop after two losses in a row in which you played poorly, and don't play ranked right after a game in which you got angry. The detail is in communication and head in ranked, but the short version is this: your MMR is the sum of your decisions, and decisions made in anger have a worse hit rate.

The whole plan on one screen

• One target at a time, ten matches per target.
• The diagnosis comes out of his last five defeats, written.
• Week 1 territory, week 2 farm cycle, week 3 information, week 4 brawl pick.
• Thirty minutes of replay per Sunday, with three sentences written.
• On day 30, redo the diagnosis. An error that changes is an error solved.
• Fewer games, with a target, are worth more than more games without.