I’m not going to disagree with the author’s main point, I’m sure doing drills is very important. But I do question their personal example. When I was in high school, I played a lot of go. But then I stopped playing for a few years. When I started again, after shaking off the rust I was a much better player. And I wasn’t doing any “drills” during those years of off time. Sometimes I think we just need a fresh perspective on our hobbies. So did the author improve because sketching is a drill? Maybe even if they hadn’t done that they still would have gotten better.
There's much to be said about taking rests / breaks to let your brain process things without the repetition and pressure.
In a weird twist, I often find myself knowing more and being more confident about previous (work related) projects after I'm out of them, once I can look at things with hindsight and think about them. And I realize how much I actually know about the domain, to the point where I think "I should go back to that project now" (even if it wouldn't actually work for me like that).
I think his stress on the value of drawing is accurate. Art is like programming, a large part is language agnostic and transferable between languages.
With representational painting, the most important thing is to have a good sketch underneath, then have a coherent value design, and finally, have a good color design and brushwork. If you didn't nail the perspective or proportion, everything else is trash. Similarly, if you didn't nail your values, then no amount of color or brushwork will save you.
The exact same thing just happened to me recently after a 10+ year break. Ranking systems seem to have shifted a little since I last played, but I feel like I'm playing easily 3-5 kyu better than I used to at my previous peak.
I think this is a different process, though. My sense is that increased wisdom transfers very well to improvement in go. What is making me better is a better ability to prioritise, make judgments and tradeoffs, and manage risk, learned from the real world. This is nice but orthogonal to the techniques for improvement on a single skill.
During the period I first started playing, I did a little exercise where I looked at the advice people give on how to get stronger. What I found was that while you'll hear all kinds of stuff thrown around, when you look specifically at what the very strongest players (go professionals) say, you get a super consistent answer: (1) do as much tsumego as you can stomach, and (2) play as many teaching games as you can with the strongest players you can find.
I had to stop rock climbing for a year due to personal circumstances and to my surprise I was better when I went back than when I was practicing 2 to 3 times a week.
I think when COVID is over and people really go back to practicing their favourite sport, many will experience this.
