Today I learned that time is zero-sum. Every hour spent is an hour you’ll never get back—a non-renewable resource. That truth can feel stark, but it doesn’t have to be grim. Instead, it’s a call to be intentional.

Every “yes” to one task is, by nature, a “no” to something else. In engineering, this principle shows up in scope creep—adding new features without cutting others risks quality or delivery. The same holds true in life. Overloading your plate means less time for rest, hobbies, or loved ones.

Today I learned about the ‘No Hello’ principle, courtesy of nohello.net. Here’s the deal: starting a conversation with just “Hi” or “Hello” might feel polite, but it’s actually a sneaky time thief. Why? Because it kicks off a game of asynchronous ping-pong. You say, “Hi.” They say, “Hello, how can I help?” And then, finally, you get to the point.

The result? A simple exchange that could’ve taken one message now takes three. That’s like introducing lag into your own communication pipeline-yikes. Instead, the idea is to skip the “hello” limbo and dive right in: “Hi! Could you review PR #123 by EOD?” or “Hello! Got a sec to debug this rogue API response?” Boom—polite, efficient, and straight to the point.

Just a bash script to Jekyll Compose a TIL and open it in VSCodium.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

SITE_DIR="$HOME/<Site Directory...>" # Replace with the path to your site
# Take the first command line argument as the title
TITLE="$1"
# Change directory to the site directory
cd "$SITE_DIR" || exit
# Compose a new TIL
NEW_FILE_PATH=$(bundle exec jekyll compose "$TITLE" --collection='til' | grep -o '_til/.*')
# Open the newly created file
code "$SITE_DIR/$NEW_FILE_PATH"
# Start server
bundle exec jekyll s --livereload

Of course, I added it to a local bin directory in my PATH, so I can run the til '<Title...>' command from any location.

Today I learned (or re-learned) that small design tweaks can make a big difference for accessibility and usability. Here’s the story: On the TIL list page of my site, I initially opted for no underlines on the TIL titles. Since I usually display the entire post right there (or a read more link), clicking through isn’t strictly necessary. It was a clean look–or so I thought.

Then I came across an article discussing the Curb Cut Effect, which essentially describes how accessibility improvements intended for specific groups (like curb cuts for wheelchair users) end up benefiting everyone. This got me thinking: even if someone doesn’t need to click the TIL titles, having them underlined serves an important purpose.

Since I have a custom layout for the TIL collection, I added default frontmatter for Jekyll Compose for the collection:

jekyll_compose:
  default_front_matter:
    til:
      layout: "til"

This allows me to use the following command to create a TIL with the default frontmatter.

bundle exec jekyll compose "Some TIL title here" --collection "til"

See the Pull Request

In _config.yml, I added a new collection specifically for TIL posts:

collections:
  til:
    output: true
    permalink: /til/:title/

See the Pull Request