Coding proficiency doesn't happen overnight.

Sun, 19 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Reflecting

Even creating this website was a challenge. Life was made easier by the people who made blogdown and the chosen hugo theme, but it was still difficult. It can be frustrating when you can’t make the changes you want to make or do the things you want to do. That is a part of learning.

I realize that it will take me a while to be able to develop the skillsets I need.

Reminded of this, I re-looked at Peter Norvig’s (Director of Research at Google) post called Teach yourself programming in ten years

In the post he echoes the idea that instead of becoming frustrated in trying to learn everything in 24 hours or 1 week, it is better to take the mindset of: I am going to learn this all in 10 years.

“The key is deliberative practice: not just doing it again and again, but challenging yourself with a task that is just beyond your current ability, trying it, analyzing your performance while and after doing it, and correcting any mistakes. Then repeat. And repeat again. There appear to be no real shortcuts: even Mozart, who was a musical prodigy at age 4, took 13 more years before he began to produce world-class music.”

Deliberate Practice

Deliberate practice is doing something with the intent of improving your skills. You need to set clear performance objectives and monitor them, getting feedback on how you can improve. It isn’t necessarily fun, while you are doing it. Most of the time it is a process of repeated frustration and failure. Falling down a couple times is a pre-requisite to moving forward.

Another idea that is intertwined with deliberate practice is consistency. Spending what time you can carve out (5min to 1hr) a day to learning a skill will compound over the long term. It can also be a relief to see that you don’t need to learn everything at once (anyways you can’t). A great quote on this is “Short term intensity cannot replace long term commitment”.

Implementing deliberate practice allows you to do a little bit consistently while focusing on what you need to improve/learn.

How to implement deliberate practice

Take the skill you’re aiming to improve and break it down into the smallest possible component parts.
Make a plan for working through them in a logical order.
Decide which parts you would like to master over the next month
Put your practice sessions in your calendar, then plan precisely which parts of the skill you will work on.
Remember your why, as this will keep you intrinsically motivated during challenges.

Coding Example:

Skillset: Coding

I want to be able to feel competent while coding and to be able to work on the projects I want to. If I want to build something (ex: Habit Tracking App), I want to be able to build an MVP. This is my example of a why.

Components:

Learn git and how to use it
Gain more experience analyzing datasets with R/Python. –> Work on personal projects
Learn new R/Python packages (ex: to analyze financial data)
Learn the basics of web hosting and deployment

Consequently plan out days in schedule to work on the above components.

This was a bit harder to create an example of. I assume as I delve deeper, the smaller components will become clearer.

Investing

An easier example is related to Investing/Equity Analysis:

Skillset: Analyze public companies and create investment write ups

Why: I am passionate about investing and want to join the Student Investment Fund at LBS.