(^44) 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know
Do Lots of Deliberate Practice.......................
Jon Jagger
DELiBERATE PRACTiCE iS NOT SiMPLY PERFORMiNG A TASK. If you ask
yourself, “Why am I performing this task?” and your answer is, “To complete
the task,” then you’re not doing deliberate practice.
You do deliberate practice to improve your ability to perform a task. It’s about
skill and technique. Deliberate practice means repetition. It means performing
the task with the aim of increasing your mastery of one or more aspects of the
task. It means repeating the repetition. Slowly, over and over again, until you
achieve your desired level of mastery. You do deliberate practice to master the
task, not to complete the task.
The principal aim of paid development is to finish a product, whereas the
principal aim of deliberate practice is to improve your performance. They are
not the same. Ask yourself, how much of your time do you spend developing
someone else’s product? How much developing yourself?
How much deliberate practice does it take to acquire expertise?
- Peter Norvig writes* that “it may be that 10,000 hours...is the magic
number.” - In Leading Lean Software Development (Addison-Wesley Professional),
Mary Poppendieck notes that “it takes elite performers a minimum of
10,000 hours of deliberate focused practice to become experts.”
*ttp://norvig.com/21-days.html h