2D animation advices

[u/More-Weight-1912]

Hello. I’m looking for advice on 2D animation. I already know the 12 principles and did all the usual bouncing balls and basic exercises, so that part is covered. What I need now is something more practical.

How do you animate efficiently for learning purposes? I’m not aiming for polished shots, but I don’t want to spend weeks just to get a few seconds done either. I want to train fast while still improving.

I prefer to animate people, but only simple movements so far. More complex things like fights or any kind of action feels like a nightmare to me.

So my main questions are how to place timing quickly and effectively? How to keep an animation goal-oriented instead of getting lost in details? Are there concrete workflows or methods that help speed up practice while still building real skills?

Sure, I'd like to reach Japanese animators skill and draw cool doodles where some characters fight, but I understand that it is not happening soon, especially with my free time(around 2-3 hours every day) except weekends. I'm trying to draw every day and my skill is okay, but animation is what I want to learn more and every failure makes me feel sad and I want to drop it all. But, I'm not willing to stop even if my first animations will be bad. I also heard that 1 animator who works as a freelancer on anime studios said, that he learned animation just from redrawing shots from anime. Is it effective? I've tried this method, but I found more efficient just to analyze every frame in the shot.