Know the SOP book inside out. Never deviate: everything goes according to plan 99% of the time; who needs experience? Hopefully by the time you find yourself in a pickle, and the book is not much help, you might have acquired enough gumption to work it out. It's the modern risk management model. Why else has command time reduced from 5000hrs to 3000hrs over the past 20 years? That's about 8 years experience down to 4. Lordy Lordy. Mostly, after 8 years, you had some gumption in the RHS as well, but now 3000hrs in LHS and not a lot in RHS is not a recipe for a happy outcome if you are still on the gumption learning curve when the book becomes no help.