I look back at things I wrote a year ago - sometimes as much as 6 years ago - and wonder if they were really written by me.
Writing every day and being willing to do it even if it's just for throwaway is the only way to develop the talent. You know, just like every other talent, ever.
You're being pedantic about the definition of culture. Many companies "cultures" are held together by a single personality, or a select few. When that person or people leaves (or stop beating the drum), the "culture" dies.
GitHub - much like the tool chain it's built around - has done a remarkable job of decentralizing culture. Far better than most companies of any scale, even ones much smaller than it.
You seem to have read past the connection between their goal as a company - which is easy to say but hard to practice consistently, otherwise more companies would succeed at building a culture that attracts an retains like GitHub does.
If supporting, contributing and deploying to open source software makes me cheap than so be it. I'm ecstatic at the chance to share that technology with my clients and to help them give it back where applicable.
I hope your endeavors continue to make you happy with your means as they do mine.
That was the difference for me, too. If I took notes at all it wasn't in one place (a mix of text files and iOS notes for me). Switching to Byword and a single file was faster and I was more consistent about jotting notes down no matter where I was.
More importantly, I didn't have any habit for reviewing them. Hope it helps you like it helped me!
For me, it's org-mode in Emacs and git. Quick idea/note/todo capture combined with time logging, task management and calendar, not to mention the table features. Got it on phone and desktops/laptops.
On a slight tangent, I'm looking for something more touch screen appropriate that I can sync with git (must be text based, preferably compatible with org-mode). While I have Emacs, org-mode and git on the current phone with a hardware keyboard, that won't last forever, and I really need something that makes for very quick idea capture on a touchscreen. Bonus points for something that also tracks/logs time, manages todos and calendars (ideally, I suppose it would be org-mode optimized for a touch screen).
EDIT: Yes, I know about MobileOrg (http://orgmode.org/manual/MobileOrg.html) and while it's close (oh, so close), it's not quite close enough (notably, it's lacking logging of time spent on tasks). Although, since it is open source . . .
I look back at things I wrote a year ago - sometimes as much as 6 years ago - and wonder if they were really written by me.
Writing every day and being willing to do it even if it's just for throwaway is the only way to develop the talent. You know, just like every other talent, ever.