A lot of the difficulty we have hitting our targets comes down to not aiming. I don't mean "not aiming well, as proven by the poor results", which is a useless tautology. I mean literally not aiming at all which is why we get poor results. Noticing when we're not aiming, so that we can decide to do that, is a surprisingly high leverage point of intervention.

The simple flinch

Perhaps the most clear instance of this is that of a flinch. The optimal way to train out a flinch is very simple and also quite quick.

1) Put the sights on the target.
2) Begin to press the trigger, only as fast as you can while knowing that you're not about to flinch.
3) The moment you no longer know, stop until you do. Take a moment to notice whether you're ready for the recoil, and when you're ready, return to 2.

Eventually the gun will go off without a flinch. There is no way to follow these instructions and still flinch, and there is nothing especially tricky about following these instructions. They simply surface the actual problem that you were choosing to brace for recoil over choosing to aim at the target, and give you the awareness needed to change your mind and choose differently.

As you repeat this, the accumulated learning of "actually.. yeah I can handle the recoil" makes bracing less tempting, and therefore makes it easier to know that you aren't about to flinch. Realistically, this is enough of a pointer to quickly learn to shoot without flinching.

To fully optimize though, which will become relevant for harder parts of aiming, we want to be more specific on what constitutes "knowing" that we're not about to flinch. We can't know anything to 100% certainty, and the main point here is to track this at all so that we're not just wasting ammo not wondering why we're not improving much. If we try to require too much certainty, we will shoot slowly, and this is unnecessary.

Instead, we want to shoot at a rate that we probably won't flinch, as putting one round into the dirt isn't a big deal and we can always slow down on the next one. It's important that if we flinch it would be surprising, and also important in general to push our limits to find out where we fail — because that's where we learn.

Again, a recoil flinch isn't a big deal so it's not that important here, but there are more challenging cases. One person I gave the above lesson to reported back that she no longer flinched at all — until she was getting yelled at and put under enough pressure to perform that it got to her.

The fear isn't of recoil here it's of failure, but the structure is the same. It's very useful to track one's own intentions and expectations so that one can deliberately pull the trigger only when focus is known to be where it needs to be to put bullets on target.

Aim as small as you can, and no smaller

It's not always easy to put bullets on target, and knowing how to fail gracefully is important. In shooting, this results in staring at the dot.

There are multiple valid reasons to look at the dot, as well as invalid reasons.

If you don't know where the sights are, you can't steer them onto the target. If you don't know if the sights are on target, you can't know whether you should press the trigger. If you insist on knowing exactly where the sights are, you will struggle to put them on target — because putting them on target requires moving them, and moving things makes it harder to know exactly where they are.

The combination of target focus and aiming small is what good shooting looks like, but it is brittle. Try to insist on aiming smaller than you can, and your attention will be pulled to tracking the dot over steering the dot. Try to stay target focused while this happens, and you will fail to address it.

The optimal response to this mirrors the optimal response to the flinch.

1) Look at the target, where you want the bullets to go.
2) Try to expect the bullets to show up there, actually and for realsies. Pull the trigger when you succeed.
3) When you find yourself doubting your ability to hit the small part of the target you're aiming for, relax your criteria and aim bigger until you can expect to hit it.
4) Repeat, while adjusting the difficulty so that you expect to probably succeed in putting bullets on target. If you're confident because you keep hitting what you're aiming for, aim smaller. If you're frustrated because you keep missing, aim bigger.

This is the process of aiming as well as you currently can. It holds you up against your limitations so that 1) you can find where your skills currently stand, and 2) you can maximize your performance given your current skills. It does not work to increase your skills.

The hint is in the "aim bigger" step. When you try to aim smaller and smaller — as needed for actual improvement in shooting skill — you'll find it harder and harder to expect to succeed, and this will draw your attention off the expectation of bullets landing on target. The next part is knowing where to direct your attention to so that it returns there.

Aim at becoming able to aim smaller

Our actual abilities are limited in large part by how well we can predict the effects of our own outputs to the system. Part of this is just "noise", which is going to be dominant in slow precise fire (though it's possible to become less noisy by maintaining calm and managing muscular tension to the minimum). In the short term, the dominant error comes from having a poor proprioceptive map from what we command our muscles to do to the results this brings about.

Learning to shoot better isn't just about learning how far off our self models are, but by driving this "how far off?" to zero by learning what the reality is — learning what good shooting feels like.

In practical shooting, this shows up as "looking for the dot", or sometimes "staring at the dot". Like before, the goal is to notice when our aim is diverging from our meta aim, and decide when this new information is worth changing our mind over.

1) Look at the target where you want the bullets to go.
2) Expect the dot to show up there, on its own, without ever having to go looking for it.
3) When you find yourself looking for the dot, or doing anything other than looking at the target knowing that the dot is going to arrive right on target without help, this means your proprioceptive map is wrong. Notice what it feels like in your wrists/arms/neck/etc as the dot arrives on target. Shift your focus from "Dot will arrive on target?" through "Maybe not" to "Okay, what I'm feeling is wrong. What does right feel like?"
4) Repeat, using that new feeling of rightness to allow for aiming smaller, and intentionally regulating difficulty so that you can likely maintain target focus without having to fall back to learning, but also likely that you notice something to learn which will improve performance.

Things that can increase/decrease difficulty are speed, window size, backup irons/dot occlusion, lights on/off, eyes closed/open.

Aim to figure out what to aim at

In general, there are many things which will pull our attention off target.

Maybe it's fear of recoil pulling us to brace for recoil. Maybe it's fear of failure leading us to wonder "What if we miss?" and jerking the trigger because we don't realize we can actually do something about that.

Maybe it's looking for the dot because it's legit not there. Maybe we want to focus on finding the dot so we can get back to focusing it onto the target, or maybe we want to focus on getting correct proprioception, letting "finding the dot" and "moving it to the target" serve the goal of getting the right feel so that next time it goes well.

Or maybe we're looking at the dot because we're worried we might miss and feel a need to "double check" whether we're on target.

The solution in each case is the same: decide what we need to do in order to get most of what we want.

Can I handle recoil? Yeah, I got it.

OMG what if I flinch? Nah, I'll take my time.

OMG what if I miss? I dunno. Is it worth taking the shot?

Where's the dot? Do I care for this target, or for all future targets?