Adding one more automated test quickly leads to increased test coverage. Saying one thing that you recently learned can lead a to lot more of those learning staying active due to kickstarting phased repetition.

In short: Experiment a lot. Measure before and after. Keep the good experiments. Discard the bad. Repeat.

Talking about discarding: No more "L:"

5. If Not Excellence, What? If Not Excellence Now, When? The book says once should always aim for excellence and settle for nothing less and that is mostly a matter of a mindset.

"You achieve Excellence by promising yourself right now that you'll never again knowingly do anything that's not Excellent — regardless of any pressure to do otherwise by any boss or situation." - Tom Watson

As someone having burned out that what once, I feel I should recommend sticking to excellence mostly in those things you can push to their conclusion… or at least listening to your body when it tells you it's time to be excellent to yourself instead.

If everyone in the organization would push for excellence and test the mettle of that excellence against reality, it would be an amazing organization indeed.

Without understanding and alignment about the goals, islands of excellency can result in bitterness, e.g. "The programmers only care about the technology".

Every time someone pressures you to cut corners, get it in writing. Preferably in a company wide medium.

Make every temporary workaround explicitly so, with a date of putting them in place attached. That way over time you can see how permanent these workarounds tend to be.