Progress compounds from repeatable units of work. A pull request you can review in ten minutes is an easy run. A three-week refactor is a max-effort session you didn't earn the base for.

The practical rule I use: if a change can't be described in one sentence and reverted in one command, it's too big. Split it until both are true.

This isn't a productivity trick. It's load management. Consistency beats intensity over a quarter, the same way it does over a training block.

The number I chart instead is average pace at 145 bpm on flat routes in similar weather. When that line trends down, fitness is real.

It's noisy. Heat, sleep, and caffeine all shift it by several seconds per kilometer. That's fine — I look at four-week rolling averages, not single runs.

This is also why I built a log that computes it automatically. Any metric I have to calculate manually is a metric I stop tracking by week three.

Tokens first means every color, radius, and shadow lives in one file with a semantic name. Components consume names, never values.

The payoff shows up the day someone asks for dark mode. With tokens it's a second block of variables. Without them it's an archaeology project.

Without a screen, you're forced to hold the problem in memory. That constraint strips away everything incidental and leaves the actual shape of it.

I bring one question on every long run. No podcast for the first hour. By kilometer twelve I usually either have an answer or a much better question.