The great thing about these peripheral pursuits is that they reduce opportunity costs and the consequence of failure. There are only so many games in a season,

The great thing about these peripheral pursuits is that they reduce opportunity costs and the consequence of failure. There are only so many games in a season, and only so many practices in between games. In athletics, if you want to build a new skill you're best doing drills so you can independently work on that skill without sacrificing valuable practice/game time where you should be focusing on higher level strategy stuff. If you're a consultant and your approach is to get on a client site and send it, that's probably an effective learning strategy right up until you tank your reputation and can't find any more clients to practice with.