Last time we discussed the importance of structuring your practice to maximize your growth. In that post I mentioned that you should do something every day for fifteen minutes. While that is a good start, usually a timer is not the best way to mark your progress.
James Clear, in his book Atomic Habits, talks about how, if you want to start a new habit, you should associate it with something you already do regularly, and start really small. For instance, if you want to start flossing, just commit to flossing one tooth when you brush your teeth. Sometimes you won’t have time to do all of them, so you’ll just not do it rather than just do a little bit. But if all you have committed to do is one tooth… you have time for that! And even if that’s all you do, you get to chalk it up as a win! Often times you’ll want to do all of your front teeth. Or maybe, as long as you’re doing it, you’ll get the back ones, too. Ultimately, flossing will become a habit.
In the same way, you can develop the habit of daily practice. You probably already have a ritual first thing in the morning to start your day, or at the end of your workday. Just tack onto that the notion that you’ll do one small unit of practice before you dive into work or first thing after the workday is done. Let’s take the example of reading code again: instead of committing to 15 minutes it might be better to commit to one module. And to make it easy you’ll have the shortcut keystroke memorized for bringing up the class file, or you’ll already have the project properly set up in your IDE to make it easy to bring it up.
If you want to learn to touch type, or increase your typing speed, you can try typing.com and work through one lesson mistake free. It’s designed to be addictive, so you’ll be inclined to try another one, or try it again and see if you can improve your time.
If you want to practice recognizing code smells, have a project with smelly code already on your system and ready to load in your IDE. Then have your list of code smells and traits handy. Pick one. Commit to finding one code smell of a particular type.
It may seem like cheating, but by starting small and making a daily, consistent practice of it, you will progress much more quickly than waiting until the weekend and cramming for an hour or two. You’ll start looking forward to your daily practice. You’ll start thinking of new ways to challenge yourself. You may not see the results in your daily work, but others probably will:
“Wow, you found that quick!”
“Where did you learn that shortcut”
“Dang! You type so fast!”
“You just seem to always know what to do when we’re stuck!”
Don’t let the clock be your master. Choose an appropriate unit for your task and do one daily. Let me know what you’re practicing below!