How drumming reinvigorated my passion for mastery

3. The Journey to Mastery
• Recommended by Drum instructor:
– Practice as often as you can
• Structured practice of patterns
• Free-form improvisation to open up creativity
– Perform live with others in a band
– Watch as many shows as you can

4. Applied to Software Development
• Practice programming as often as you can:
– Spend time learning mature technologies well
– Play around with experimental new technologies
to open up creativity
• Read as much code and watch as many
presentations by others as you can
• Use your programming skills on real-life
projects

6. How To Learn
• Start by playing a pattern slow
• Speed up very gradually with a metronome
• Practice inserting the new learned pattern in
actual music playing till it is internalized and
becomes a part of my "feel"

7. Applied to Software Development
• Start learning a new technology by writing tiny
programs
• Gradually expand those tiny programs to do
more
• Look for practical applications for the new
technologies and use them in the real-world

9. Passion and Aspiration
• The more I learned drumming patterns, the
more I wanted to learn new ones
• Playing the drums at one point led me to
aspire toward utter and complete mastery of
all the drum styles I like
• This in turn gave me extreme motivation to
enjoy practicing mundane exercises such as
marching band drumming rudiments

10. Applied to Software Development
• The more technologies/languages you master
the more you want to learn new ones
• At one point, you may realize that it is
extremely rewarding to master the entire
software development field
• This will motivate you to master every
discipline related to software development
including mundane ones like system
administration

12. Applied to Software Development
• Get photos of masters in software
development (e.g. Uncle Bob or Ken Auer).
• Cut off the head
• Insert yours
• Use as inspiration for mastery 

13. Andy Maleh (Obtiva Corp.)
• Blog: http://andymaleh.blogspot.com
• Email: andy@obtiva.com
• Twitter: AndyMaleh
• Bands and Upcoming Shows:
– Gag Order (Female Alt Rock)
• Nov 4, 2010 @ Elbo Room, Chicago, IL
– Cletus Darby (Garage Grunge Rock)
• Dec 10, 2010 @ Silvie's Lounge, Chicago, IL