The same way millions of musicions before you. By reading music, training, time and patience.
I’ve learned how to do many things in my life, and I’ve come to appreciate that it’s very easy to practice the wrong thing and never make any progress.
Another way to phrase my question might be, “What and how should I practice to develop my music reading skills?”
What kind of music do you want to be able to read? Presumably the music you like and want to play. So read that. You will always be reading new stuff you don't know, not the same thing over and over, so I'm not sure how never making any progress is a possibility. Sight reading/playing difficult music is not easy, sounds like you want a quick way of learning the skill, which doesn't exist.
A fellow went to a Zen master and said, “If I work very hard, how soon can I be enlightened?”
The Zen master looked him up and down and said, “Ten years.”
The fellow said, “No, listen, I mean if I really work at it, how long—”
The Zen master cut him off. “I’m sorry. I misjudged. Twenty years.”
”Wait!” Said the young man, “You don’t understand! I’m—”
“Thirty years,” said the Zen master.Really? I genuinely trying to communicate that I was criticizing their opinion and not them personally. Did it come off as sarcastic? In any case, I apologize.
You are being awfully presumptuous. I am doing this because I enjoy it. I don’t have a destination or a timeline. I am not asking for a “quick fix”.
I’m asking how to focus studies in music because I struggled for many years with music when I was in school. I did practice quite a bit and always lagged behind.
Your response reminds me why I don’t ask people on the internet for help.
I feel similarly. I've performed the Chopin/Liszt etudes and Bach's sinfonias as a kid (which I guess translate to intermediate classical piano skill) but would struggle to sight read even the two-part inventions at 1/2 or even 1/4 speed.
I'd be quite keen to use some method to upgrade my sight reading to where I find learning new music rewarding, as long as it's known to produce results.
Currently I can learn a Chopin Nocturne or Mazurka much faster by ear (listening to it to learn the rhythm/melody/harmony) to recreate it roughly and watching someone play it to get the more exact voicing (with the sheet music as a reference mostly).
Treat this as a separate part of your practice.
I would imagine it’s similar for piano or guitar.
I remember in ear training class in high school all the brass kids playing imaginary valves with their fingers when trying to sight-sing.
It's harder for singers, and quadratically harder for instruments where you have more positions and play more notes at once.
One way to boost the aural/visual connection (when you already have strong aural/kinetic and visual/kinetic connections) is to pick up instruments that are very different from the ones you already know; I would think this is the goal of music education programs requiring basic proficiency with piano and singing, regardless of the student's main instrument. Once you have to learn a new set of muscle memory associations to go from the same note on the page to the same note in your ear, it starts to break down the strength of the muscle memory associations.