aka not making life hard for no reason

I almost built an entire open source tool for this newsletter post. On top of prepping for Posit conf speaker coaching, doing my job, and watching all the Fast & Furious movies for the first time with my close friends.

I won't congratulate myself too much. I'm still vulnerable to creating a bespoke tool at any moment. And, this week at least, I gave myself a learning path of least resistance.

The choice isn't the actual choice

I needed that path this week! Taking advantage of a textbook with built-in self quizzing meant I learned more Rust + neovim. The alternative wasn't actually building another learning tool. It was thinking about building while learning nothing at all.

Optionality »»

Hank Green has a great video on following your tools instead of your passions. He admits he can produce so much because he feels like he's flying downhill instead of trudging up one.

Purposeful friction can be good! Checking my understanding early beats flying through a resource while retaining nothing. But if we always choose the hard option, we'll end up burning out + choosing nothing at all.

A data thing I liked

Dockerfile best practices that are actually wrong by DevOps Toolbox

A not-data thing I liked

Before you panic about that Atlantic reading piece by Joel Miller