Inspecting code isn't intuitive. You cannot just base it on common sense. In order to effectively Inspect code, you need to creatively combine your experiences with general principles of good coding, time management and a healthy dose of discipline and stubbornness. You can achieve this best on a formal training course dedicated to Tick-the-Code. Somebody has already packaged the ingredients in a way that makes them easy to learn. Then ticking code has a chance of becoming your second nature.

Many software developers have had some kind of formal education in how to write code. Many managers and surprisingly many software developers themselves think that just because they can write code, they can also check if the code is OK. Unfortunately this premiss doesn't hold water any better than a sieve would. Writing code and checking code are two different things. If you have no formal education nor any training in the art of checking code, you probably will check like you were writing code. You pay attention to the same things as you try to during writing, and you don't manage to add much value with your checking.

Tick-the-Code is a low-tech approach to code review. It is brain-intensive, focus-inducing and counterintuitive. We could even say that it is taking you back-to-basics, to the grass-root level of the source code. Tick-the-Code is heavy as paper and result-driven. It is at times purely mechanical and sometimes heuristic, all the time puzzling and at best creativity-inspiring. Ticking code free from the shackles of technology can be therapeutic and at the same time both arming and disarming. It is all these things and more.

It can be helpful to describe what Tick-the-Code is not. It isn't reactive. You can't automate it and it isn't just for beginners.