I've been interviewing the last few months after having had the same leadership role for 7+ years and never really having interviewed before. Your point about maintaining interview-readiness is something everyone should tattoo on their arm. I wish I had kept a log of accomplishments, projects with associated tradeoffs, anecdotes, etc. I've been polishing my interview responses and sometimes I remember something I had done that would have been great to bring up in an interview but I hadn't thought about in years.

And to add on - not directed at you more to other people where this isn’t crystal clear - neither you nor I said to be “interview ready” means “grinding leetcode so you can reverse a btree on the whiteboard”.

You and I are both basically referring to being able to describe accomplishments, challenges, and results in STAR format.