Something I think hasn’t been discussed much in these comments is what the alternative would look like, and why that is undesirable. If you only perform the re

Something I think hasn’t been discussed much in these comments is what the alternative would look like, and why that is undesirable. If you only perform the refactoring after making a change (eg. adding a ticket for cleanup later), then (a) you made it hard to do the change, but also (b) it’s now far less vital to perform the refactoring - as the desired outcome has already been reached. Refactoring for refactorings sake can be hard to figure out what the goal or end-state is. Making a refactoring in order to facilitate a particular desired change acts as a great forcing function for helping you decide what to change and why.