Can't Grok, Won't Grok

In the last post - we talked about why deliberate practice is important, and that I aim to approach my practice with: Purpose - I’m spending my non-refundable time on something, I want it to count. Plan - Before I start, I think about how I’m going to structure my practice so that it (hopefully) meets it’s purpose. Progress - Ensuring I take time to reflect on the practice, and adjust as necessary. To get specific (we’re programmers, after all) - this translates to: Defining Purpose Creating plans to exercise ‘something’ that I encounter in my career - for example (and this list is far from exhaustive): Learning a new programming language. Working with different IDE’s to develop and debug. Traversing and processing data. Effective automated testing. From unit to end-to-end. Creating build and deployment pipelines. Working with different databases and ORMs. Performance profiling and testing. Finding memory leaks. Rapid prototyping. Paradigm shifts - e.g. object-...

TL;DR; Consistent, effective practice is a key part of a healthy, enjoyable career. Most people practice without purpose. This means they either quit and/or learn less than they could. Read this for inspiration on how to take a more considered approach to your practice. Note: I’m English, but opted for the US English spelling of ‘Practice’ throughout (as opposed to ‘practise/practice’) to avoid confusion with the difference in spelling within the term ‘Deliberate Practice’. Practice? I think we can all agree on a couple of things: People who are experts practice often. Experts are extremely disciplined with their practice. This will generally come as no surprise when I mentioned, and people will rarely argue those points. They make sense. Thanks to the growing number of interviews and podcasts - experts are getting more limelight, and we’re getting more sneak-peeks into that practice routines, habits and rituals (podcasts like Tim Ferriss’ are awesome for this). However...