Speed Is a Skill

Fast developers aren’t typing faster. They’re deciding faster.

The bottleneck is never the implementation — agents handle that. It’s the pause before starting. The unclear intent. The second-guessing.

Where Time Goes

A typical day

Planning        ██░░░░░░░░  ~20%
Waiting         ████░░░░░░  ~25%
Context switch  ███░░░░░░░  ~20%
Reviewing       ██░░░░░░░░  ~15%
Rework          ███░░░░░░░  ~20%

Fix the waiting, switching, rework. Planning and reviewing speed up automatically.

The Stack

• Clear intent first — Vague prompts waste cycles. Know what to build before describing it.
• Good defaults — Pick once, never decide again. Defaults kill decision fatigue.
• Ruthless scope — Build less. Features not built have zero bugs.
• Short loops — Plan, execute, review. Not plan for hours, execute, discover wrong direction.
• Unblock yourself — Don’t wait politely. Ping. Recommend. Ask directly.

What Not to Optimize

Code style debates. Perfect architecture before users. Docs for features that might die. Meetings about meetings.

The Truth

Moving fast requires being wrong sometimes. If never wrong, moving too slow.

Speed isn’t moving fast. It’s removing reasons to move slow.