CJ Eller

Even after learning how to read it, sheet music still intimidates me. How do I learn 32 to 64 measures worth of music? Whenever I get overwhelmed by a piece, I return to what I learned from my teachers. Learning a piece lies within sheet music's structure — measure by measure.

It sounds overly simplistic at first, but when you sit down and tell yourself you're going to learn a single measure of music today, things become less overwhelming. Your focus turns on getting a chord just right, on practicing to make a particular passage flow better. One measure turns into another measure which turns into another measure. Before you know it, you can play the entire piece of music.

I've observed myself taking this measure by measure approach into my programming projects. I turn aspects of a project into measures of music I have to learn.

Just today I gave myself a particular task to work on for an AWS project that requires a fix on a Gitlab CI/CD pipeline. I've broken down the fix into a couple of gestures that form a measure within my mind. Do x, see if it does y, if not then add something to a script and try z — that's one measure. Then I work through this like I do with a measure of music. It allows me to see progress, even if it's the only thing I do with programming for the day. Like with music, one measure turns into another.

And before you know it, there's a project ready to be deployed.