Step 1) open MacBook Pro box and marvel at the hardware design. It reminds me of my MacBook Pro 12" which was probably my favorite Mac hardware until now. Why? Imagine carrying an extra battery in your backpack and it only takes 5 minutes to swap batteries.
Step 2) Boot into recovery mode by holding down the power button.
Step 3) Erase the HD with APFS (Case-sensitive) Why? Because changing capitalization of files and committing them to GIT on a non case sensitive hard drive partition is a huge headache.

Step 4) Re-install the OS
Step 5) Try to install Dropbox, be disappointed that it does not natively support M1 and decide to abandon Dropbox. Why? All I want dropbox to do is sync files between devices and make it easy to share large files. Why the crap have they not updated it to work with M1 by now? My bet is that since they have added a ton of useless features over the years that it is a large undertaking to rewrite. Shame on them. Why not let folks opt into all the extra shit? I already pay for extra storage on iCloud so going to try using that for a while.

Step 6) Install Node via nvm. https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm
6a) install the latest version of node which supports M1: nvm install node
6b) install node 14 for my older projects by creating a Rosetta version of the terminal and running nvm install 14 more info
7) Install Swish - How it the world have I not found this awesome window management tool until now!
8) Install 1Password, Bartender (works great with the notch), VSCode, iClip, Arq Backups, Bear, Xcode and all my other favorite Mac apps.

Sidenote: I am upgrading from a 2015 MacBookPro 2015 where 70% of the time, the fan was running at 100%. So far on the 2021, the fan has not even turned on. Wow!