# Practice Session Checklist

> An hour of deliberate practice is worth several hours of following along. The difference is
> almost entirely in the four habits below.

**Exercise:** _______________  **Date:** _______  **Time budget:** ____

## 1. Before starting

- [ ] I have read what the exercise is testing, and **the trap it is built around**
- [ ] I have **written down what I expect to happen**
- [ ] I have written down how I will know whether it worked
- [ ] I am doing this in a place I can safely break — see
      [Lab setup](/academy/labs/checklist/)
- [ ] I am not going to look at a solution first

**My prediction:** _______________

🔴 Skipping the prediction is what turns practice into reading. The gap between what you expected
and what happened is the entire learning event; without a written prediction there is no gap to
notice.

## 2. During

- [ ] I attempt it before searching
- [ ] When stuck, I read the **actual error message** properly before anything else
- [ ] Then the documentation, then a search
- [ ] I change one thing at a time
- [ ] I note what I tried that did not work

Changing three things and finding it works teaches nothing, because you do not know which change
mattered. That is the most common way an hour produces no understanding.

## 3. Hit the trap

- [ ] I hit the trap the exercise was built around
- [ ] If I did not, I check whether I actually did the exercise as written
- [ ] I understand **why** it is a trap, not just how to avoid it

Not hitting the trap usually means the exercise was misread or short-cut. Getting a working result
without meeting the difficulty is not success — it means the difficulty is still ahead of you, in
production.

## 4. Diagnose, do not reset

- [ ] When something broke, I investigated before fixing
- [ ] I can state the cause, not just the fix
- [ ] I did not delete and start again to make the problem disappear

Resetting removes the symptom and the lesson together. Sitting with a broken state is
uncomfortable and is where the transferable skill is built.

## 5. After — the three questions

**Did I hit the trap?** yes / no

**Can I explain the result to someone who will push back?**
If the explanation is "it works now", the diagnosis was skipped.

**Would I do it the same way under pressure at 3am?**
These exercises are chosen because their lessons surface during incidents, not during development.

## 6. Capture

- [ ] One line: what surprised me
- [ ] Anything that would have saved me twenty minutes, written down
- [ ] Code committed, even if it is throwaway
- [ ] If this relates to real work, I have noted where to apply it

**What surprised me:** _______________

**Where this applies at work:** _______________

## 7. Honest close

- [ ] I finished it, or I recorded exactly where I stopped and why
- [ ] I did not quietly skip the hard part
- [ ] I know what I still cannot do

| | |
|---|---|
| Time taken vs budget | |
| Trap hit | yes / no |
| Learned something transferable | yes / no |
| Next exercise | |

An abandoned exercise with an honest note is more useful than a completed one where the hard part
was skipped — because the note tells you where to come back to.