You need to practice to keep skills up. In my youth, I worked at at scout camp two summers teaching merit badges in the scoutcraft area. For the camping merit badge, I tried to get the scouts skill up to building a two match fire.

Years later, on a Webelos scouting weekend with my son, I was trying to help the camp staff build a fire for lunch following a heavy overnight rain. No problem in my own mind. Half a box of matches later, finally fire. I was awarded a certificate of the "order of the match" at the end of the weekend. How emberassing.

It's amazing how quickly skills can get rusty. Some tinders are better than others after a rain. If you don't build fires with any regularity, and in different locations where the available materials may be different, it is easy to become complacent and think that you "know" what to do. If I had been in a survival situation with limited matches, I could have been in trouble.