Measure more

Before jumping in improving the performance of your build system or of a slow piece of code, take the time to setup some metrics that you expect to change after your efforts.

Any metric. On any support. Even on some paper equipped with a piece of paper.

Working on those kind of tasks is exhausting: you feel the pressure you’re not adding value to the product, as long as you’re not implementing new features.

But if you can show others you actually improved the system I guess you’ll feel better.