Making decisions can be nerve-wracking! The scariest decisions are those that are impactful and final. Impact is obvious—choosing a career path is a lot more impactful that picking out your clothes for the day and obviously contributes to a decision’s importance. But reversibility matters too—it’s a lot easier to dip your toes in the water than to dive in head-first. I think many people (including me) mistakenly assume that decisions are less reversible than they actually are. For example, switching careers or moving to a new city are both choices that seem final at first glance.

Another month in quarantine. It looks like there’s light at the end of the tunnel, and earlier than I had previously thought! Despite everything, the US has been by far the most effective country at getting shots in arms. Here’s hoping that Fauci’s right when he says that the general public will start getting vaccinated by the end of April! On to the review:

Goal Tracking

• 🟢 Get 1% faster. Training’s been going pretty well—I’ve set a couple PRs in training! I’m running a 100m and 200m time trial next week which should tell me a lot about where I am. The only danger I see on the horizon is injury—I’ve got a mild case of high hamstring tendinopathy what I’ll have to be careful to manage properly.
• 🟢 50% less discretionary spending. Despite big spending for Valentine’s Day (hotel, dinner, gift), I still managed to come in well under the bar I set for myself here. My February discretionary spending was 70% lower than my average monthly spend in 2020 (but significantly higher than January).
• 🔴One hour of solitary free time a day. Once again, I haven’t managed to make time for this during the week. I haven’t even been tracking this goal! In March, I’ll make sure to keep track of whether or not I do this every day in Roam.
• 🟢 Twice-weekly live conversations with friends. 4/4 again in February! It’s been great to catch up with some people I haven’t talked to since before the pandemic.

Measuring your Javascript bundle size is an important way to keep client load times low. These days, load times matter for more than just user experience: load times can affect SEO. In this article, I’ll share my workflow for measuring this website’s bundle size with every change that I make!

Update 5/21: I wrote a Part 2 that details how to diff your bundle sizes against master. Check it out!

Tyler Cowen asks: “What is it you do to train that is comparable to a pianist practicing scales? If you don’t know the answer to that one, maybe you are doing something wrong or not doing enough.” I’m a software engineer, so let’s answer that question for software engineers!

First, we need to figure out why pianists practice scales in the first place.

Why do people have midlife crises? The term itself was only coined in 1965—it appears to be a phenomenon of modern life. Here’s my unfounded hypothesis: midlife crises arise when a person’s self-concept of growth meets the cold water of reality. This model explains some stereotypical midlife-crisis behavior like switching careers and buying expensive things. It explains why quarter-life crises have become increasingly common. It even hints at which sets of people are more likely to experience crises.