Two people can put in the same number of hours and walk away with completely different results. The difference isn’t just talent—it’s geometry. One person stacks their hours side by side, like bricks laid flat. The other layers depth into them, letting practice leak into idle moments, stray thoughts, even dreams.
That’s when practice compounds: when it’s not just scheduled but ambient. When it stops being a flat schedule of reps and starts becoming a solid shape that fills the day. Prolific practice builds quantity; surface area builds depth. Put them together and you get the architecture of mastery.
Start with Area
Before you can add depth, you need surface. Prolific practice is that surface — the wide base you build by simply showing up every day.
Think of it like laying down a big flat field. At first it’s repetitive, even boring: one more page written, one more sketch drawn, one more chord progression played. It doesn’t feel like mastery. It feels like tedium. But without this base, you’ve got nothing to extend into three dimensions.
A lot of people get stuck here. They want depth before they’ve earned width. They dream of living like a poet, thinking in lines of verse while walking through the city, but they haven’t even written a hundred rough drafts yet. Flat practice is where you build the muscle memory of showing up. Only then can you add layers.
Rule of thumb: Don’t romanticize depth until you’ve built area. Ten sloppy reps a day beat one “perfect” rep a week.
Add the Z-Axis
Once the surface exists, you can start to push it outward. That’s where practice surface area comes in.
Adding the Z-axis means asking: Where can I sneak practice into the cracks of my life?
- Waiting in line → mental rehearsal.
- Commuting → audio notes or explaining your craft aloud.
- Cooking → rhythm drills, phrasing exercises, or just letting ideas float.
- Conversations → storytelling practice, testing metaphors, sharpening delivery.
This is when practice stops being something you “do” and starts being something you “carry.” Instead of only practicing when the timer is on, you build background processes that run all day. Like Eminem turning every word he hears into a rhyme, or Bobby Fischer analyzing ceiling tiles as chessboards, the Z-axis is about letting practice bleed into idle time.
And here’s the kicker: depth often feels lighter than surface. It doesn’t take extra effort — it takes a shift in attention. You’re not adding hours, you’re reusing the ones you already live.
Turn Life into a Cube
This is the tipping point. You’ve got area (the surface of daily reps). You’ve got depth (practice sneaking into Flat practice divides life into two buckets: practice and everything else. Add the Z-axis and those edges start to blur — practice bleeds into idle time. But the real transformation happens when there’s no division left at all.
That’s the cube.
The cube is when practice stops being something you occasionally step into and becomes the room you live inside.
It’s not about extra hours or clever hacks. It’s about identity.
- A writer doesn’t just write during scheduled blocks; they start thinking in sentences.
- A musician doesn’t just practice scales; they start hearing music in traffic, footsteps, conversations.
- An athlete doesn’t just train in the gym; they start moving through the world as if every motion is rehearsal.
The cube isn’t obsession—it’s integration. Practice isn’t an event you attend. It’s the atmosphere you breathe.
Practical Geometry
So how do you actually build a cube? How do you move from flat, scheduled practice into a life where practice has volume? It doesn’t happen by accident. You design it.
Here are a few starting points:
1. Define your minimum unit.
What’s the smallest slice of practice you can carry anywhere? A singer might hum scales under their breath. A coder might mentally debug a snippet while waiting for the elevator (Bill Gates explained that he would see code in front of his mental eye). A writer might sharpen a single sentence in their head while brushing teeth. Find your “pocket version” of practice.
2. Anchor it to dead time.
Pick two or three boring routines — commutes, chores, showers — and declare them practice zones. They’re already built into your day; now they have a purpose.
3. Set a background theme.
Each week, choose one aspect of your craft to let your subconscious chew on. Maybe it’s rhythm. Maybe it’s metaphor. Maybe it’s transitions. Everything you notice that week becomes filtered through that lens.
4. Turn constraints into drills.
Don’t wait for perfect conditions. If you’re tired, practice under fatigue. If you’re short on time, practice compression. The limits of your day become the shape of your practice cube.
5. Share ugly work.
Publishing—even the awkward, unfinished stuff—expands the cube outward. It forces your practice to interact with reality instead of staying hidden.
At first, this feels clumsy. You’ll forget. You’ll drift back into “flat hours.” But every time you pull practice into life, even for a few seconds, you’re adding thickness to the plane. You’re making it inhabitable.
Logging more hours on the clock is just the first step towards mastery. Ultimately, you’ll need to reshape the space you live in.
Flat practice makes you look disciplined, but it stays shallow. Add depth and suddenly your practice has volume. You’re not chasing hours anymore—you’re building a cube you can live inside.
That’s the geometry of mastery:
- Area = show up often.
- Depth = let practice bleed into idle time.
- Volume = dissolve the edges until practice is the atmosphere itself.
Most people try to “fit practice into life.” The shift is to flip it: let life itself become practice.
Because when you inhabit the cube, you’re not just doing reps—you’re breathing them. And that’s when the work compounds in ways outsiders mistake for talent.
This was inspired by Increasing your practice surface area by Channing Allen from Indie Hackers.