Before I stepped into the marketing world, I was a classical guitarist and guitar teacher. When choosing music for a student to play and practice it’s important that the music is not all too hard or too easy.
In other words, a guitar student needs to practice something that will push them, but they also need some music that’s easy for them. While the harder stuff pushes students to new heights and capabilities, the easy stuff is a chance for them to be truly excellent at something. It’s a chance for them to feel like a badass.
When working with my team here at PMG I find myself thinking along the same lines. The folks I mentor need assignments that will push them: things that involve them learning something new about the application in question or working with a new technology.
At the same time, they also need things that they can easily accomplish — where their code review is a simple :+1: because they accomplished their task perfectly.
Assignments should fall along the spectrum of hard to easy as well. They need to feel like the badasses they are, and those experiences give them more confidence to truly dig into the difficult stuff.
Getting better at something is about finding a balance of practicing difficult and easy things. Too much difficulty and a student will burn out or shut down. Too much ease and boredom sets in.