Cloning monorepos that have a lot of code and history is time consuming, and we need to do it frequently throughout the

In fact, there are a number of powerful benefits to be gained from taking a rest day that will actually bring you closer to achieving your health and fitness goals. Thus, here are three reasons you shouldn’t exercise every single day, along with some signs to look out for that might be telling you it’s time for a break.,In the winter of 2015, I was working as a Software Engineer at Microsoft and looking for my next Software Engineering job, albeit with little success. I remember expressing my frustration to a friend over a velvety Stout beer at a funky bar in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood on a cold, rainy November night. I remember his words clearly:,Like most developer productivity teams, we work on large services that have a big impact on our day-to-day experience. However, it’s sometimes the one line fixes that can make a huge difference. Our work is about understanding that.,To learn more about Engineering at Pinterest, check out our Engineering Blog, and visit our Pinterest Labs site. To view and apply to open opportunities, visit our Careers page.,To learn more about Engineering at Pinterest, check out our Engineering Blog, and visit our Pinterest Labs site. To view and apply to open opportunities, visit our Careers page.,Even though we’re telling Git to do a shallow clone, to not fetch any tags, and to fetch the last 50 commits, we’re still not running this operation as fast as we could be. That’s because we aren’t setting the refspec option. Notice that by not setting it in the pipeline configuration script, we’re telling Git to fetch all refspecs: refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*. In the case of Pinboard, that operation would be fetching more than 2,500 branches.,Likewise, when I was mentally drained from a rough week of finals, I crashed and burned in my race that weekend. While I was physically fit enough to do well, I just couldn’t stay engaged in the race, and my performance suffered immensely. I knew that in order to do better in my next race, I needed to take a break to recharge my mind.,By simply adding the refspec option and specifying which refs we care about (master, in our case), we can limit the refs to the branch we care about and save a lot of time. Here’s what that looks like in our pipeline code:,There is nothing bad about being a MacArthur Fellow itself. People keep asking me how I am doing or how my day is going. I laugh. Are you kidding me? My day is going great. I stubbed my toe, burned my toast, and mailed the tax bill to the cable company. I lost my keys. I got soap in my eyes. I am a MacArthur Fellow. I AM GREAT.,However, even the most enthusiastic exercisers should take a break once in a while. For example, when I was in college, running at a high level and trying to achieve some pretty lofty athletic goals, I took a complete rest day at least a few times a month.,This simple one line change reduced our clone times by 99% and significantly reduced our build times as a result. Cloning our largest repo, Pinboard went from 40 minutes to 30 seconds. It goes to show that sometimes our small efforts can have a big impact as well.,“Strength, power, speed, and muscle mass actually increase during resting periods. Technically it’s known as “specific adaptations to imposed demands” …if you go HAM the entire time and don’t allow your body to “catch up” you could find you don’t progress as quickly as those who are savvy enough to incorporate rest days.”,Therefore, if you’re looking to become a stronger, more powerful athlete, or just trying to boost your overall fitness and physique, pushing hard every single day without rest will actually get in the way of that. Instead, work some easy days into your routine so you can reap the benefits of the days when you’re working extremely hard.,And while it can be easy to get caught thinking that a day off from working out will ruin your progress, cause you to miss out on fitness gains, or negatively impact your mental and physical health, I can assure you that isn’t the case.,For instance, one of my best collegiate track races occurred when I was completely dialed in both mentally and physically. I truly believed I was going to break five minutes in the mile, I stayed mentally engaged the entire race, and then I finally achieved that goal.