30 Days of Writing, Day 4: Putting in Reps.

A huge life goal of mine is to create a body of work that I can ultimately look back on and be proud of. I’m hoping to build some software that helps a lot of people, or write a blog post that gets someone to take control of their life, or possibly speak at a conference and inspire someone to build their own empire.

If that is to be a reality, then I’ll have to put in a certain number of repetitive deliberate practice. The metaphor behind reps in weight lifting is that the process of lifting heavy stuff literally tears your muscles, and after a period of recovery, they’ll be bigger and better than before.

This mirrors the programming process–every day, I’m stretching my brain out to its maximum capacity in my effort to create code and applications that I’m proud off.

I shouldn’t have the audacity to think that my life goals are achievable in a span of a few months or even a few years: five years in as a professional programmer and there’s still a ton of programming left for me to learn.

I’m not going to lie–there are times where I think, “When am I going to create something that is of some value to the world?”

Whenever those thoughts drift in to my mind, I remind myself that that the only thing keeping me from getting to be a better programmer is a few thousand more hours of deliberate practice.

The next x years would be more of the same: trying to get better, failing a lot, making mistakes, hopefully correcting them, and putting in my heart and soul in my work.

Until then, it’s a bunch of the next years of repeating the same day: programming, learning, writing, and cycling, and putting in more reps.