I was stuck in this position for years, with DaB and art in general.

What works for me is focusing on consistency and habit building above all else. Draw a little every day. It doesn't need to be a lot, even if you only have the time or energy to draw 1 box that's okay for know, but make sure you do it every single day regardless of everything else happening in your life.

As I kept doing that I found it got progressively easier to sit down and draw a little each day, and that even though I wasn't doing much the fact that I was doing it everyday still made me progress way faster than when I was pushing myself to do a lot a day and then burning out quickly.

I'm far from perfect with this, I still get in ruts sometimes or I get so stressed out by other things going on that I can't focus on drawing at all, but with this method in the past year or so I went from being on lesson 2 to starting lesson 7, where the rest of the course was done on and off over the course of almost 4 years.

I wouldn't recommend restarting the box challenge, finish it and get it critiqued and then you can see if more work needs to be done. Improvement on the challenge is gradual so it can be hard to tell if you're improving or not on your own.

i was in the same postion too, i constantly grinded lesson 1 stopped and returned , my advice is to continue the last 50 boxes, get them critiqued, let us be the one to judge whereether u need revisions or not,

you will not see improvment by grinding the same exersise for eternity, infact , you will learn much more about boxes the further you go in the lessons .

goodluck and i hope u succeed

I don't think you lost everything you learned. You may be rust, but at least you still know many of the concepts and surely is not at same level of drawing as you started. I think you can use lesson 1 exercises as warmups to remember and to avaluate what you are doing right now: if you're not completly lost, go forward.

2021 was a terrible year for me, I stopped DaB and drawing at all for something like 4-5 months. I came back in May, fearing almost the same as you but realized I wasn't that rust. I posted my Lesson 2 exercises 3 days ago and I think I did a good job.

atomic habits by james clear and deep work by cal newport. i recommend reading these two books

Your 80% to the finish line. If you do even as little as 3 boxes per day (maybe 20 minutes tops?) you're done in less than 3 weeks. Therefore I suspect the actual work is not the problem but the mindset. I have also suffered from discouragement in various areas of life. Best advice I have received is just keep moving forward. Just because you are discouraged doesn't mean you have to let such feelings stop you from continuing to take action towards your goal. Just feel discouraged and keep going. Ignore it. Give it room to be there (in other words acknowledge and accept that's how you're feelign) but no need to let it run the show.

Re: skill stagnation. I doubt that. It may not be readily apparent, but the reps are the reps. Your brain will integrate past experience as you move forward. I have piano pieces that are extremely rusty (almost unplayable) from 30 years ago. But when I choose a piece to relearn and polish up, it takes a mere fraction of the time of a completely new piece.

From a fellow negativity addict, a lot of this is habitual thinking that needs to be examined and questioned. (I am not pointing specifically at you...I am speaking from experience.)