You Said Next Year (Sunday Builder's Mindset)
The decades disappear like sinking ships.
You swear you were just in your twenties. You swear the pandemic was yesterday. Then you look up, and a decade is gone.
Every clinician I know has a prototype in their head.
The workflow shortcut you thought of as an intern. The alert you knew was broken as a resident. The discharge script you rewrote in your head on every shift. The handoff template you sketched on a napkin.
They are still in your head.
You said you’d build it after residency.
Residency ended.
You said you’d build it after fellowship.
Fellowship ended.
You said you’d build it when the kids were older.
They’re older.
You said you’d build it when you learned to code.
Someone else shipped it.
You said you’d build it when the EHR opened an API.
The EHR opened an API.
You said you’d build it when AI was good enough.
AI is good enough.
A decade is gone.
Not because you were lazy. Because the friction between your clinical instinct and shipped software was so high that starting felt pointless. Six months to learn React. Another year to learn FHIR. Six more to wrap your head around HIPAA. By the time you could build the thing, your shift had changed, the workflow had moved on, and the frustration had faded.
That friction is gone now.
What took six months takes a weekend.
What took a year takes an afternoon.
What took a decade is sitting in a chat window, waiting for you to describe what you want.
You know the workflow better than anyone on the product team.
You know the edge case because it bit you last Tuesday.
You know the failure mode because you ignored the alert at 2 AM.
That knowledge has always been the hard part. It was never the code.
The decade is going to pass either way.
April becomes April again. And again. You have the same frustrated thought during the same 2 AM handoff with the same broken workflow.
The only question is whether the prototype in your head is also in a repo by then.
What you said you’d build is sitting in your head right now.
It has been for ten years.
Open the laptop.
What are you building this week? Reply and tell me — I read every one.
— Kevin