I really like the idea of maintaining a digital garden.
You spend a little bit of time every day / week tending to your 🌻 digital garden, seeing it grow and improve over time. It applies the 1% rule where incremental small improvements add up and compound over time.
I’ve started applying this concept to the tools I use in security research.
Your tools are your garden
Every week take a couple of hours to improve your workflow.
Start with an analysis. Where are you now? Take a look at all the things you’re doing, where you spend the most time and how you can implement tools to lighten the load. Recognise which aspects of your work are essential versus supportive.
Don’t be afraid to copy from others!
Be scientific
It’s easy to get lost in this process.
Don’t aim to redesign your whole workflow every week! Do small and constrained experiments and see how little changes affect your workflow.
Some suggestions
- keybindings - spend some time familiarising yourself with the keybindings for your IDE of choice. Vim motions 🧑🍳💋.
- semgrep - start by writing just one detector and run it when you do research