In my first year living in Chicago, I was delighted to discover one rainy morning while walking my dog, that the Chicago Marathon route included a long stretch just half a block from my apartment. We grabbed coffee from my forever favorite, Hero Coffee Shop, and stood on the corner cheering and clapping for the runners passing by for a long while before retreating back inside to dry off and warm up.
I’ve never been a runner myself because I have the distinct honor of exercise-induced asthma that makes me want to die when I pick up the pace, but I have such profound respect for those that do partake in the sport. I have a few runner friends and I’ve always found the preparation for a big race so fascinating and exciting.
So, naturally, with the Chicago Marathon taking over the city yesterday, it’s been at the forefront of my mind as I prepare for a marathon of my own. Or rather, a buildathon.
I’m one of the women who will be competing in Season 4 of Lovable’s SheBuilds program this week. SheBuilds is a 72-hour build event where women from around the world take an idea from concept to working product with support and access to each other and the Lovable team.
And while I won’t be running 26.2 miles, it turns out that preparing for 72 hours of intense app development is not all that dissimilar to preparing for a marathon.
Tapering
When you’re preparing for a marathon, it is my understanding that, after weeks of steadily increasing their mileage, runners start to decrease their training volume in the final two weeks before a race in what’s called a taper. In the final week, many bring their runs down to just a few miles a day and dial back other forms of training, especially heavy weight lifting. The goal of tapering is to arrive at the starting line recovered, rested, and ready to go.
Prior to finding out about my SheBuilds acceptance, I have been in a 6-week sprint getting the Time Spent app ready for beta testing. On the day of my acceptance, I estimated a final 25-30 hours before submitting the app for iOS review.
One of the weird final-mile jobs is taking the app I’ve already built and making it behave like a proper iPhone app. That means wrapping the web app in a native iOS container, wiring up permissions like the microphone, testing how it behaves on some else’s phone, and then sending it through Xcode and TestFlight.
This is completely new territory for me in my app development journey, and while it would have been tempting to make this final push last week, I knew immediately that the wiser choice is to hold on this work until after SheBuilds. Like a runner, I need to taper.
Even though app development is not at all physically demanding, learning new skills and programs and jargon is highly cognitively demanding (as evidenced by my lack of writing recently). In the past month, my heavy build days have left me pretty tired by the end of them. I can’t risk that sort of crispy feeling as I go into a 72-hour build sprint on a completely new product.
So, instead, I spent last week writing up some REALLY good documentation for myself on where the product is at, what’s left, and where I need to pick things back up after SheBuilds.
I appreciate my own growth on this because I know a past version of me would have pushed through to get it all done. But the deadline for beta was set by me! And I refuse to be my own worst boss and risk a really big opportunity for myself.
Planning the Course
I’ve heard that when runners enter this tapering phase they can feel a little unmoored by their newfound free time. Same, girl, same.
I entered last week thinking I was going to spend the majority of it building. With that out of the mix kind of abruptly, I needed to not just find ways to fill that time, but shift into mental preparation for SheBuilds.
First, I started writing out everything I would need to do to close all of my open loops ahead of build. Starting with the obvious, I need some additional childcare coverage and for my husband to take the lead with our daughter next week when he’s not working himself.
I’ve mapped out meals for next week, too. Though I love to cook and often make at least one elaborate meal per week to host my in laws, we’ve canceled for the week to lighten the load. Fed is best! There will be more time for kitchen creations after SheBuilds.
I’m also made sure we have groceries on hand, and took care of the other life admin things that don’t just disappear because I have a big thing TM going on right now.
And then there’s my calendar itself.
True to form, I’ve time blocked the week, which feels very meta given that the app I’m building is a voice-first time blocking app called Quality Time. I did this manually on paper and then transferred it all to my Google Calendar, of course, but boy, I cannot wait until I can do this using the app that clinches me the SheBuilds win for my category ;) (is this manifesting?!).
Obviously, I have the 72 hours blocked off to go heads down in the build, but I’ve also thought through how much time I want to dedicate to different stages of the project, and mapped out the work around the other commitments in my life.
I’ve also blocked time in the days leading up to the sprint. In addition to the Lovable webinars, I have reserved space for Seedling which kicks off this week as well.
I know that once the clock starts ticking, things will almost certainly go sideways. I’ll encounter technical challenges I didn’t anticipate, something will take three times as long as I expected, and I’ll need to adjust my plans accordingly. But I also know I don’t need to add to that by leaving it to future me to also figure out what we’re having for dinner each night or to take the first few hours of the sprint figuring out what to tackle first.
Every decision I made ahead of time is one less to make during the week, and protects my time and my mental bandwidth when I need them most.
It’s also worth noting that my little one has the day off school today. Closing these loops and having a plan set for the week allows me to be more present during our time together instead of distracted and mentally running through my endless to do list. That feels all the more important to me to protect when I know I’ll be heads down and less available to her at the end of the week while I’m building.
Studying the Course
I’m also borrowing another strategy from my runner friends this week: I’m studying the course. Or, I’ve been studying the course, but I’m doubling down on it.
Before a big race, runners study the course to learn the topography, know where they need to conserve energy, and generally what to expect along the way. They also review their training and think through their lessons learned, prepare their gear, and ensure they aren’t trying anything new or introducing unknown variables on race day.
I’m doing my own version of that by combing through Lovable’s documentation and SheBuilds FAQ. I want to make sure I am clear on the rules, the resources available to us, and expectations of participants.
I’ve also been looking into accounts from women who participated in previous seasons to see what lessons I can extract from their experiences and apply to my own.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t use this time to revisit my own experiences building apps over the past several months. I’ve learned so much about how to work with AI to build software and I’m reflecting on those and even writing them down along with approaches that have worked well so I have a handy little reference library close by while I’m building.
Speaking of, I recently had the pleasure of talking with Vesna about my experience building apps with AI, including what I’ve learned along the way and the thinking behind Time Spent and TimeReady. If you’re curious about how someone with no traditional software development background ends up building apps of her own, you can read our conversation here.
There’s one other part to my preparation that won’t surprise anyone who’s ever worked with me closely: embodiment.
I’m a long-time champion of embodiment as a tool for producing really good work. So much so, that I am almost positive any of my past colleagues reading this either rolled their eyes or smiled at that line because I’ve used that word at work more times than I can count.
I believe that the best work and the best preparation stems from embodying it. You have to know your topic so deeply, so intricately, that you can talk about it, think about it, connect it to everything else with ease.
I’ve spent a ton of time this year reading everything I can get my hands on about time—from time management books (you already know I love, love, love Laura Vanderkam here), to more philosophical takes (like Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks), to the peer reviewed literature on the subject, and even a physics book on our understanding of the construct of time (which is wild, and we will talk about it later).
I’ve been finding and admiring every clock in Chicago, time-related art, and writing about it all publicly and privately to make sense of the most important, finite resource we get in this lifetime.
The more I immerse myself in the subject, the more connections I make. I’m noticing things I wouldn’t have a year ago, and finding inspiration everywhere, from the books I read to the conversations I have to my own daily experiences with time.
So, naturally, I’ve decided to practice what I preach and dig into Best Laid Plans: A Simple Planning System for Living a Life That You Love by Dr. Sarah Hart-Unger as part of my prep this week. It’s been on my TBR all year, and this feels like the perfect time to dive in since the app I’m building is, at its core, a planning app.
I just want to say, isn’t it kind of cool that I’m preparing to build an app meant to help people better plan their time by planning my own time? By drawing upon all of the work I’ve been doing and set in motion long before I knew I’d be at the starting line on Thursday?
Fueling and Recovery
In the final days before a marathon, runners have to pay particular attention to how they fuel and care for their bodies. Nutrition, hydration, rest, and recovery are critical to performing well in a race.
Of course, a 72-hour app building marathon is a lot less physically demanding than a marathon, but it really does require a lot of the same body care in the end.
If you’ve ever spent an entire day glued to your desk trying to work on something complex and dynamic, then you know that mental exhaustion has a way of physically exhausting you too.
During SheBuilds, I’ll be spending a lot more time with my butt in a chair than I typically have since quitting my 9-5 and I know from experience that long stretches of intense focus can make it far too easy for me to forget to eat, drink water, move around, and even get up to use the dang bathroom sometimes!
So, I’ve definitely scheduled in my gym sessions intentionally this week! Not to hit some vanity streak, but because I know moving my body is important to maintaining good energy during the build. I’m also thinking about the meals that will keep me fueled, making sure I have my giant Yeti water bottle nearby, and adding reminders to my calendar to get up and stretch and take a walk around the block.
And last week after the news, I spent some guilt-free time out by the pool, reading and letting my mind wander while turning my face to the sun—soaking up the little break between build sprints. I’ve resisted the temptation to treat this freed up time as an opportunity to cram more mentally demanding tasks in.
I refuse—I refuse!—to arrive at the starting line already exhausted!
The Starting Line
On Sunday, thousands of runners took to the streets of Chicago to do something extraordinary. They drew upon months of training and preparation, and all the energy and determination they could muster to carry themselves across the finish line.
Later this week, I’ll sit down at my computer to begin my own little marathon. Hopefully rested, well-fed, sufficiently hydrated, and ready to build something really fucking cool.
Wish me luck!
And to my fellow Season 4 SheBuilds friends, all my best to you! I can’t wait to see what you build!
Cheers,
Tiffany
P.S. I could use your help!
As I prepare to build Quality Time, I’m doing a little research on how people plan their days and weeks, what works for them, and where things tend to fall apart.
I’ve put together a short survey, and I’d love to hear about your experience. Whether you’re a meticulous time-blocker, a devoted to-do list maker, or someone whose plans rarely survive contact with real life, your perspective would be incredibly helpful.
So that’s a wrap, friends. If you feel this was time well spent, give this a little heart or leave a comment below. And if you think you might wanna spend more time with me each week, subscribe to Time Spent.
If you’re new here, thanks for listening! I’m Tiffany, a multi-passionate mom living in Chicago, a writer, and an entrepreneur who’s become a little obsessed with how we spend our time.
After nearly a decade in Corporate, I traded the career ladder for a chance to build something of my own. These days, I’m writing about our relationship with time, studying everything I can get my hands on about it, and building apps to help people spend more of their time the way they want to.
