Doing better the second time

There are many things you automatically do better at, if done a second time.

For me, when writing a piece of software, I get it all wrong the first time. It may work, but I can see how the code could be written in a cleaner and more effective way. If I get the chance to do it over, the result is better, and it doesn’t take much concentrated effort. It’s mostly about doing it that second time and wanting to avoid the annoyances from the first time.

Certainly, you could do the thing a second time and make all the same mistakes, and put up with all the same annoyances. This could happen if you think it’s not possible to overcome those annoyances.

However, if you take a moment to make it a possibility that things could be done better, then you give yourself the chance to overcome those annoyances.

It might be worth defining what I mean by annoyances. For example, if I’m driving somewhere, maybe the route I take the first time has stoplight after stoplight, slowing down the drive considerably. There’s another route that avoids all these stoplights, and the drive is much faster and more enjoyable. The stoplights are the annoyances, and it just takes your mind being open to the possibility that there is another option out there to avoid them. If I don’t take the route with the stoplights, there’s a chance I take the route without them, even if I’m not particularly trying. That’s what I mean by annoyances and being open to the possibility of overcoming them, without having to put in concentrated effort.

Some things are impossible to do a second time, unfortunately. Try it a second time if you can, but write your lessons for others if you can’t.