A good intuition of what will and will not be on a critical path is also helpful. I will never spend time optimizing a method I know is called rarely, but if I

A good intuition of what will and will not be on a critical path is also helpful. I will never spend time optimizing a method I know is called rarely, but if I know something is on the critical path then I'll keep an eye on performance and build it in such a way that I can visualise a way to refactor it "the right way" further down the road.