Lessons from a 1-year old dog

As I was going through my morning routine with our 1.3 year old dog, Reese, who is very energetic, it occurred to me how well short training sessions every morning are working.

A 12hr session with her once a month will do virtually nothing.

Improvement is not really what my dog wants to be doing -- she would rather chase squirrels, dig holes, jump on people -- do something heroic.

Likewise, most of us don't really want to clean our office, write a CI script, refactor some messy code -- we want to design things, code a new feature, make a sale, build 1000 widgets, etc.

Improvement is hard and sometimes painful.

And the pain is proportional to the size of the improvement dose we are facing.

If we can break it down into small enough chunks, it is manageable, and actually enjoyable.

Platform improvements are rarely moments of deep inspiration, but rather just buckling down and doing what you know should be done.

Discipline.

And this sometimes works best if you schedule a time block every day -- 25 minutes, start the timer, go ...

You only have 25m, get going, now!

And after our morning walk, Reese now walks toward where her leash is hanging -- she is actually looking forward to these short, regular sessions.

Improvement is best continuous.