Deliberate practice is often the opposite of enjoyable. I like the term “stretch” for describing what deliberate practice feels like, - Cal Newport

Deliberate practice is often the opposite of enjoyable.

I’m usually facing someone who wants to send twenty-nine emails to fix a problem.” His solution is simpler: “Go talk to them.

You’re either remarkable or invisible,” says Seth Godin in his 2002 bestseller, Purple Cow.1 As he elaborated in a Fast Company manifesto he published on the subject: “The world is full of boring stuff — brown cows — which is why so few people pay attention…. A purple cow… now that would stand out. Remarkable marketing is the art of building things worth noticing.”2 When Giles read Godin’s book, he had an epiphany: For his mission to build a sustainable career, it had to produce purple cows, the type of remarkable projects that compel people to spread the word. But this left him with a second question: In the world of computer programming, where does one launch remarkable projects? He found his second answer in a 2005 career guide with a quirky title: My Job Went to India: 52 Ways to Save Your Job.3 The book was written by Chad Fowler, a well-known Ruby programmer who also dabbles in career advice for software developers.

The task of a craftsman, they conclude, “is not to generate meaning, but rather to cultivate in himself the skill of discerning the meanings that are already there.