Culinary school spends weeks on knife cuts that you will never use in your own kitchen. Tourne potatoes are beautiful and tourne potatoes are also a punishment. The cuts that actually save time at home are smaller in number, simpler in execution, and applicable to almost every recipe.
Learn to half-moon onions, slice garlic on the bias, julienne carrots with a tip-first rocking motion, dice a tomato through the equator, and break down a whole chicken into eight pieces. With those five moves, an hour of weeknight cooking turns into thirty minutes.
Practice the cuts with cheap vegetables -- carrots and potatoes are forgiving and your knife will not slip. Aim for consistency over speed; the speed comes after a hundred onions, not after a hundred attempts to go fast.
