Day 2

virtue

Github’s tool for creating pull requests makes it clear which repo a PR will go to, if one is willing to read. I skipped the reading, assuming the text at the top wasn’t important. I wound up sending a PR to the wrong repo and burning 20 minutes trying to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it.

This (subconscious?) choice often works out for me! I save a lot of time! If I’m losing half an hour to the problem, it’s possible I could be on the “would benefit from being more conscientious” side of the spectrum. With that, I’ll speculate about ways to 5x this virtue (vice in sufficient quantities!):

• reading, then rereading, every screen I come across. Every test’s a reading test.
• reading the docs page for every function I use before I use it.
• reading a piece of software then refactoring it to make its logic cleaner

One part of me fears getting slowed down. Another part is interesting in mastering small skills so the big ones come more fluidly. I miss the feeling of complete mastery I once had in calculus classes, when I could weild equations effectively and could also intuit why they were true. Perhaps I can get there with programming too.

Another secret question to consider later: What would it look like if I were 10x more ambitious?