What is the most efficient way to earn multiple GitHub achievements quickly?

[2019-02-18]

I currently have 3 achievements (Pull Shark, Quickdraw, YOLO) and I'm trying to collect more.

For those who have earned many achievements, I'm curious:

1. What order did you earn your achievements in?
2. Which achievement was the hardest to get?
3. How long did it take you to get Galaxy Brain? Did you find it difficult to get answers marked as accepted?
4. Any strategies for Pair Extraordinaire? How did you find someone to co-author with?
5. Is Starstruck realistic for individual developers, or mostly for popular open-source maintainers?

Would love to hear your experiences and any tips for someone trying to expand their achievement collection!

[Advait251206]

Here’s a practical breakdown of the main GitHub achievements, how people usually get them, and what tends to be easy vs. hard based on real experience:

🏆 Common Achievements & How to Get Them
⚡ Quickdraw

How: Open an issue or PR and close it quickly (usually within minutes).
Tip:

Open a small issue (even typo/README fix) and resolve it fast
Works best in your own repo or a low-activity project

Difficulty: Easy

🦈 Pull Shark

How: Get pull requests merged
Tip:

Start with small repos (less strict review process)
Fix documentation, bugs, or add small features
Consistency matters more than size

Difficulty: Easy → Medium (depends on repo quality)

🤝 Pair Extraordinaire

How: Co-author a PR
How to do it:
Add this line in a commit message:

Co-authored-by: username

Tip:

Collaborate with friends, classmates, or contributors
Split work on a feature or bug
Even 1–2 co-authored PRs can unlock it

Difficulty: Easy (if you coordinate with someone)

🧠 Galaxy Brain

How: Provide answers in Discussions that get marked as “accepted”

Reality:

This depends on other people marking your answer
Not all discussions get marked, even if your answer is good

Tips:

Focus on GitHub Discussions, not issues
Give clear, step-by-step solutions
Target smaller repos where maintainers are active
Answer newer questions (higher chance of being seen)

Difficulty: Hard

💡 YOLO

How: Merge a PR without review

Tip:

Happens naturally in your own repo
Or in small projects with relaxed workflows

Difficulty: Easy

🌟 Starstruck

How: Your repository gets a high number of stars

Reality:

This is more about visibility and usefulness than coding alone

Tips:

Build something:
Useful
Shareable
Easy to understand
Strong README + demo is critical
Share on:
Reddit
LinkedIn
Twitter/X
Niche tools often perform better than generic ones

Difficulty: Hard (especially solo)

🧪 Public Sponsor / Sponsor-related (if applicable)

How: Sponsor someone or get sponsored

Tip:

Not purely technical—depends on community engagement

Difficulty: Varies

🔥 Hardest vs Easiest (Realistically)

Easiest:

Quickdraw
YOLO
Pair Extraordinaire

Moderate:

Pull Shark

Hardest:

Galaxy Brain (depends on others)
Starstruck (depends on reach + impact)
🧭 General Strategy

If someone wants to systematically collect achievements:

1. Start with “controlled” ones

Things you can trigger yourself:

Quickdraw
YOLO
Pair Extraordinaire
2. Move to contribution-based
Pull Shark → contribute regularly to smaller repos
3. Then community-based
Galaxy Brain → help in Discussions
Starstruck → build & promote something valuable
🧩 Key Insight

There are basically 3 types of achievements:

Self-triggered → easy (Quickdraw, YOLO)
Contribution-based → effort-driven (Pull Shark)
Community-dependent → hardest (Galaxy Brain, Starstruck)

If you approach it with:

Consistent contributions
Some collaboration
And a bit of visibility

you can realistically collect most of them over time without forcing it.