Unless you practice very specific things every single flight out of your twelve hours.
Spend 30 min practicing maneuvers, level turns (accurately) climbing and descending turns and steep turns. Flight at minimum airspeed and stalls in different configurations.
Then spend 30 min doing landings in various configurations and with varying speeds on downwind. Do an entire traffic pattern at 60-70kts, then fly a downwind as fast as the thing will go.
Instead people noodle straight and level for a while and call it a day.
This. And what EXDAC said.
If I have not done some airwork, stalls, slow flight, and a few landings in the last 30 days, that will be my next hour of flying.
Following on from the excellent report linked in the Bagby Aztec crash in A&CC (everybody read the report please), what flying schools are not great at are teaching you how to know when to say no. They may tell you "no", but did they
teach you? 400 hour PPL, with limited C310 and DA42 time is handed the keys to the Aztec (okay, the only Aztec key is for the door, but you know what I mean), and takes the plane! I have lots of time in each of those types, and can attest that they are each very different to the other. Self checkouts on these twins are for higher time pilots, and with at least a briefing from a mentor who knows your skills. Eager PPL guy, while walking out to the parked Aztec, should have asked himself, would my instructor/flying school just send me off in this? ('cause that would have been a hard no!). Then use that truth to reassess the whole idea.
I'm all about pilots learning new skills, but at a safe pace, and with some mentoring. I have learned that I am checked out when the mentor pilot I trust tells me that I am. I, as this PPL's colleague did, have declined to fly sometimes - airplane condition, new type, unsafe load, poor weather - and no one has ever criticized me for it. And you know what (eager PPL's/CPL's reading this) usually those people extended another offer soon after which I was content to accept, because they respected the fact that I would say no!