No matter how long you’ve been in this business, you should keep practicing the craft of coding.
The better you get at what you do, the easier things will start to become. You’ll get gigs easier. Tasks that used to take you an hour will take you 30 mins. Your confidence will grow, and so will your bank account.
After a while some things will become automatic. You’ll get into a rhythm on a daily basis, and your career will seem like it’s coasting.
When things are good, it’s easy to let them coast. Don’t get too comfy here, or you can end up slacking.
Sharpening the Swords
With technical skills, it’s a must that you challenge yourself regularly. Learning new frameworks and tools is one way. Learning theory is another. Drilling (aka, practicing techniques repetitively) is another, far underrated way of keeping your skills up – muscle memory, baby!
I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.
– Bruce Lee
Soft skills – practice these too. If you find yourself coding without human contact for weeks on end, get out of the house and socialize. If you don’t have social skills, get some. (That’s is a whole endeavor unto itself – very achievable though).
Coast, But Not Too Long
Don’t get me wrong. When you’re good at something, ride that wave. There’s nothing like the feeling of success, confidence in your ability, and constant flow. But too much of that will make your skills slip.
Samurai sharpened their weapons regularly. Soldiers and police dismantle and clean their guns, and practice at the range. Olympic athletes keep practicing long after they get the gold – hell, even after they retire.
Keeping your skills sharp isn’t just what builds your career in the first place. It’s what takes you past your career and into your legacy – whatever that may be.
What are your thoughts on this? Leave a reply.
Mike, this is important advice. Serena Williams was asked why she was not smiling once at a press conference after winning a match, and she said she didn’t want to be here because she had to practice the next day, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/serena-williams-flawless-response-to-being-asked-why-shes-not-smiling_55f1ec36e4b03784e27897b3 — even masters of their craft practice for hours every day.
I also think Cal Newport backs up what you are saying. In his post, The Grandmaster in the Corner Office, http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/01/06/the-grandmaster-in-the-corner-office-what-the-study-of-chess-experts-teaches-us-about-building-a-remarkable-life/, he expounds upon the idea of deliberate practice and advocates it as the critical means by which one obtains a remarkable life.
The problem I always grapple with as a backend software engineer is: how do I incorporate deliberate practice into my life? I think about this question all the time, but have difficulty at times finding an answer.
Great links, Robert – thanks for these.
Deliberate practice is something that needs a dedicated place in your schedule, which is tough to do with a full-time job and a social life. Progressive companies will give you “investment days” where you work on whatever you want, so that’s a good time for this. But even that encourages the tendency to make things too goal-oriented, which isn’t always best for this kind of practice.
This kind of practice is akin to any other goal in your life, be it advancing your career, getting stronger at the gym, or improving your love life. It needs a time slot.
I find that allocating 15 minutes every day (at the same time, say right after work) is largely beneficial. Which makes sense since you’re essentially habit building – habits are best acquired with frequent doses of small amounts of time – rather than infrequent doses of large chunks of time.
In addition if you carry a laptop everywhere, you can whip it out whenever you have a moment – I make great use of subway time on a regular basis – with coding, writing and so on.
I like the idea of dedicating 15 minutes a day to getting better at something. Start with a number which is almost difficult to say no to first then go up from there.
Sorry it took so long to get to this…I don’t think I provided my email address originally to get pinged in case someone replied to my comment.