Get Off the Tightrope
summary
Describes concrete tactics to stop treating big work as an all-or-nothing tightrope: build a story mapping of an e‑commerce flow, slice it to a minimal set (view product, add to basket, enter payment, ship), keep a clean Git history with small commits and interactive rebase and cherry‑picks, use TDD outside‑in so there’s always one failing test showing the next step, and write notes or voice plans; these methods reduce interruptions, make branches landable, and let work resume quickly.
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chapters (16)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:11GET OFF THE TIGHTROPE
- 0:29A very common problem.
- 1:57THE PROBLEM THE SYMPTOMS THE CAUSES SOME REMEDIES WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?
- 5:28Tech culture reinforces this view.
- 10:50Opportunities for empathy & collaboration.
- 12:48Planning ahead.
- 17:03Story mapping breaks down your big problem into small, achievable subproblems.
- 21:59Cherry-pick preparatory work onto master.
- 25:18Learn to switch between the mental modes of red-green-refactor.
- 26:03Remember that red-green-refactor is a powerful mind hack.
- 29:29Write tests that really do check what you care about.
- 30:22Take notes and write down questions as you find them.
- 31:57Talk to other people about what you're doing and why.
- 32:31History hygiene. Test-driven development. Notes & conversations.
- 38:21Recording and Production Confreaks
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