I’ve won 5 of the 7 hackathons I entered. That’s not the interesting part.
The interesting part is the clock.
Give yourself two days and a lot of the usual work disappears. No architecture religion. No “we should really think about this.” You either have something people can click, or you don’t.
I used to over-plan. Draw the system. Wait for a cleaner moment. That moment does not show up.
What the timer does
Around hour 30, with a staging environment falling over, the question gets very small. Does it run. Does it do the thing. Can someone else use it.
That’s it. The rest is taste you can add later.
After
I didn’t “become a builder.” I already was one. I just stopped pretending that more planning was the same as progress.
Now I ship first and let the world argue with it. That’s a better feedback loop than a diagram.
If you’re stuck in the planning phase, set a timer. Build the small version. See what actually breaks.