I think that "secret agent" analogy is very deep. Secret agent must monitor what he is doing and the results of his actions and make his actions either the best possible (wash a dish in a best possible way) or most compatible with ways of others (put washed dish where other think it should belong).

Deliberate practice grows here naturally.

And this attitude extends everywhere, not just to programming and/or washing dishes.

Yes, deliberate practice is my favourite topic.

I find ego to be persistent, expansive and not very deliberate. Mythical or fictional identities are deliberate, perhaps through their ephemeral nature, limitless yet constrained. For me it's a way of tapping into a play/flow state and compartmentalising away stress and uncertainty. As a teenager the mythic entity was my self; as an adult I have had to turn elsewhere to find that spark (this was a very painful lesson).

There's so much in this little paragraph. Thank you for sharing it.