I am not looking for generalised advice. I want to hear how you, specifically, learnt to draw.

i am particularly curious for idpet response

I don't know why me, since I'm still really amateur. But about my answer, I started on the school drawing stuff like my favs anime. I'm quite an introvert, so I spent my breaks drawing instead of playing outside, during a big time I stopped, but a lot of years later I decided to start again. Due the huge gap of years I wasted a lot of time and by the time I got back, my drawings were worse than what I did at school.

On my school days I drawed with just basis knowledge, when I started again I asked for some suggestions, people advised me to learn anatomy and perspective so I bought a lot of books about that, I'm still learning and there's still stuff on the books I don't understand, but I try to do my best.

The second thing is try to buy some dolls if you can, that helps a lot to understand some bodies since... to be fair, the classic suggestion about "drawing head" can be confusing, everyone must to find a way to calculate their pictures, for example I tend to draw a gesture pic and then draw a skeleton of the torso above the sternum and checking the rest of the body using.

The other suggestions:

1- when you're stuck trying to understand something, check some tutorials on youtube.

2- When you're watching anime, manga, or seeing pic, try to analize them and separate their bases as a doll (trying to draw robots with a lot of joints helps a lot too)

Example of basic joints:
http2.mlstatic.com/D_NQ_N...A40688871152_022020-O.jpg

3- Practice a lot, but not blindy. Instead try to understand what you're doing. I tend to commic a lot of mistakes too and I'm always glad when someone make me a constructive criticism, because I can realize what I did wrong and avoid commic the same mistake in the future. For example I drawed boobs being plain spheres like this:

hypnohub.net/index.php?page=post&s=view&id=162001

But someone told me the boobs would be like half-filled baloons and gave me some references to practice, now I'm drawing them like this:

hypnohub.net/index.php?page=post&s=view&id=162999

hypnohub.net/index.php?page=post&s=view&id=164264

and right now I received some help about thigh muscles and I'm practicing it. The important thing is that you never stop learning and don't be disappointed if you make mistakes.

I'm not the best example but here's my take :D

First thing, as said before is practice. Not just any practice tho : Have fun ! Seriously this sounds dumb, but the reason you don't give up is because it's fun to draw.
It's cool to have ideas and get them to paper, fun to draw the dumbest joke you had in mind, just have fun and draw what you like.

Second thing is to accept that, yes as you start it won't look great. As adults, the disavantage we have over kids learning to draw is that we put more pressure on ourselves, instead of focusing on the fun.

There are a bunch of exercices that can help improve your technical level. It's a bit overwhelming because there are a lot of different things to learn in order to make a "good drawing".

Drawing from real life : that's a very, very usefull and efficent way to improve, because you get a better "eye" (the way you understand space, volumes, how it transmits to 2D) and better knowledge of a bunch of stuff like anatomy and perspective.
Draw anything you find interesting, cool, or just anything really. People, yourself, your hands and feets, animals, random objects etc..
Vehicles are really tough but they teach you a lot.

Do the boring exercices : I know, I know it's not the fun part, but it helps a lot. Using a ruler to draw the perspective correctly, doing a stupid number of small drawings to get the pose and the composition just right, if possible going to live model classes. The thing isn't that you need to do them for the rest of you life for every drawing, but it's important to tackle those at least at some point.

Get anatomy books : You can find them online, download them if you can't buy them. A good bunch are "Anatomy for the artist" by Sarah Simblet, and the George bridgman books like "constructive anatomy". A whole bunch of artists on twitter do tutorials and the likes. Also study pictures because anatomy in books is a good place to start, but it won't get you all the way there.

Study drawings you like : I feel like tracing can't really get you anywhere, at least not when you try to improve your level in drawing. But studying an image to understand better what you like or dislike and copying it to get a better understanding of it can be a great hep, especially when you start.

Get references. At least when you can, take the time to google what you intend to draw, of get a pinterest account. This goes a very long way to improve a drawing, because you can't draw details that you forgot existed.
PureRef is great to make reference boards, which are super helpfull to have when you feel you need them.

Lastly, I'd say two types of excercices can be pretty nice : doing your best on a drawing and having a place you don't show anyone to draw garbage in. Sounds contradictory but doing your best pushes what you can do, even if it looks like trash, you learn on the way and that matters. The other is kind of a trowback at the "having fun" one, but it's also a way to practice and keep in mind what you learn in other exercices. You won't learn as much if you don't practice what you learned in more personal drawings.

That's my whole way there : first drawings of monsters and weird characters for a while, until I got motivated to draw from life and take classes to learn. Then I went to art school and spent a lot of time on said boring exercices. Feedback from other artists was a bit of a double edged sword : it can be a big help but also set you back or demotivate, depending on the person.

Hope it helps

EDIT oof I might have gotten a bit carried away, that's a lot of text