What is deliberate practice?

There is a well known theory about 10 000 hours of practice in order to achieve mastery. This is not absolute rule, of course, but it’s hard to question the importance of smart practice. That’s when you are going out of your comfort zone in order to practice and improve your desider skills.

Unfotunately It’s not always possible to start practicing skills like that on your day job. It can be demoralising or harmful for the team or project with tight deadlines and budgets. To practice in field you have to be already proficient enough, so that you can spend less time experimenting and wandering around.

That’s where deliberate practice is useful. You can practice your desired skills outside of important projects. Solving well known problems or artificial exercises. Which is more fun that it sounds.

While relatively new concept in software engineering, deliberate practice is a well known and widely applied in music, sports and art.