Maintaining personal flying currency is an effective barrier in the prevention of those accidents attributable to lack of recency or skill. In Chapter 16 (General Aviation Thoughts) of his book A View from the Hover, famous test pilot John Farley, provided some practical suggestions on how devise a personal training programme and incorporate it into regular flying so that precious time and money is saved yet essential skills are kept honed to the standard required should an emergency occur or conditions require a certain level of skill, for example, a cross-wind landing.
John kindly gave GASCo, permission to produce an abbreviated version of the chapter on personal flying currency in the form of a Safety Evening Card. We recommend to those attending safety evenings that they adapt it for their own type of flying and circumstances. We stress that it is not a universal panacea and that pilots may have their own equally admirable systems. For instance, the personal flying logbook, particularly online versions, can be very helpful in this respect. Whatever works for the individual is fine, the main thing is to keep a track on one's currency and the essential flying skills for one's own flying in realistic terms rather than simply in terms of three landings and take-offs in the last 90 days. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that a particular skill was practised much more recently than it actually was. A PDF version of the card is available to download here.
Glider pilots have a similar tool called the Currency Barometer which is available to download from the BGA website.