I memorized The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock during my first job as an engineer out of college. The .Net codebase would take 3-4 minutes to compile. I printed

I memorized The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock during my first job as an engineer out of college. The .Net codebase would take 3-4 minutes to compile. I printed out the poem and taped it up in my cubicle. On each compilation, I would work on memorizing a few lines. I had never done anything like it before but memorized all 140 lines in just a few weeks. 12 years later I still remember about 50% of it. It’s a famous enough poem that it comes up once every few years and I impress some friends or strangers. At this point the entire poem just feels like an old friend. It has been surprisingly rewarding investment of otherwise wasted time while waiting for a build to finish.