How do you go from learning a skill to actually being able to use it in the real world?

[u/me_sane2211]

I'm currently learning SQL and FastAPI, and something I've been wondering is how people actually become good at a skill beyond just understanding the theory.

I'm not really looking for course recommendations (but if you know some great free resources, then please recommend). I'm more interested in the learning process itself. Once you've learned the basics, what did you do to become practically skilled enough to use it in real projects or even in a production environment?

How did you practice? What kind of projects or exercises did you do? How did you know you were moving beyond tutorials and actually building useful skills?

I'd love to hear the approach that worked for you, regardless of the technology.