When I first starting (thinking about) practicing on my own, I often felt that my practice time was spent standing in front of the mirror, wondering what to do, what I should work on, feeling like the students on their lessons that saw me practicing would realize that I had no idea what I was doing, being afraid to practice anything for fear of developing incorrect muscle memory and thoughts of my high school coach saying "practice doesn't make perfect, only perfect practice makes perfect" kept repeating in my mind. So for a long time I didn't practice at all. In hindsight, ANY practice I do has only improved my dancing. Even if I did practice some incorrect technique over and over, it made it so much easier for my pro to identify my mistake and correct it, because at least I was consistent. That may not be where you are in your own dancing, but I found that for me, having the confidence to practice was a big hurdle to overcome.
Once I did start practicing on my own, I found it much easier (or maybe just more fun??) to practice my routines rather than doing drills, etc. I think I had a hard time knowing if I was doing the drill correctly or not, or if I was getting any benefit from the drill since I had a poor understanding of what the drill was meant to do. So, I just practiced my routines. It was much more clear to me what my issues were and where they were occurring when I would dance through my routines. As I have progressed in my dancing, I find drills to be more helpful to me now, especially to warm up. But I think at first I was lacking the knowledge to know what the drills were meant to accomplish.
