Today I want to discuss my experience with learning new skills. It has taken me years to understand how my brain works when it comes to learning a new skill. I thought I might share some of my observations.

Background

Over the years, I have tried to develop new skills and new interests. It seems that with each skill I attempt to learn, I become more adept at learning. Perhaps someone with expertise in neuroscience and brain development might be able to explain this observation to me. Even if I don’t completely understand what is happening, I can see it happening. This might be like driving where you don’t need to understand what a carburetor is in order to drive the vehicle. Anyway, I digress.

The first actual skill that I actively worked on continuously was playing guitar. Every book, tutorial, and guitar player you come across in attempting to learn guitar all come to the same conclusion: to improve your guitar-playing skills, you need to practice. What I have come to realize is that there is a plethora of material to practice. But, there is one section lacking in the practice material department. This section is called, “How to practice the guitar.”

Now don’t get me wrong, if you do a Google search, you can find as much hits as an 80’s pop artist. What I am talking about is the scientific reasoning behind how one should practice a skill such as guitar. Recalling my first years as a guitarist, I can say that I practiced a lot. What I mean by a lot is that I gauged my practice based on quantity. How long I practiced was as the same importance of how many repetitions I did on the material I practiced. This seemed the best way to hone my skills as this was something I could easily measure over time.

As I became a better player, I started to question the quantity of practice versus the quality of practice. Which side had more importance in achieving what I wanted to do on the instrument? Ultimately, having a balance of the two is the most ideal.

Relevance

Now, what does all of this have to do with reading, writing, and typing code? Well, I have noticed similarities between learning guitar and learning to code. As of this writing, it has been seven months since I started to code and I have observed that I am measuring my progress qualitatively. I am keeping track of how much time i spend coding, how many lines of code I write/type each day, and how many pages I can read in a book before my eyes hurt. I am at the point of questioning the merit of quantitative measurements once again. Unlike last time however, I have come to this observation in seven months, not two years.

Conclusion

Right now I wish I had a solid answer to give as it would make this post more complete. Unfortunately, I do not have such a thing. What I do know is that there is a constant debate between quantity and quality in all disciplines. What I want to understand is when to favor one strategy over the other. I will continue to measure progress quantitatively as it seems to be a good tool for measurement.

What are your thoughts on the quantity versus quality debate? Do you think one is better than the other?