The old boilermaker at the Tulsa job taught me to read my rod before I ever light up
He watched me grab my striker first thing on a Tuesday morning and said "you check your fit-up or you check your welds, pick one." Now I spend 10 extra seconds eyeballing every joint before the arc starts, and my rework on this 30 foot stack has dropped to almost nothing.
Man, I had an old hand tell me the same thing years back. Something like "the weld starts before you pull the trigger." Blew my mind how much time I was wasting fixing stuff I could've caught in 5 seconds.