Edit wiki/perfectionism-over-hackathon-fit.md — Rookie Mistakes & Gotchas

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# perfectionism over hackathon fit

## what happened

spent 1-2 extra hours polishing when a rougher version would have been fine. was more intent on perfection than i should have been. those hours could have gone toward the pitch or the demo.

## why it's a gotcha

in a hackathon, time is the only resource that matters. polishing a feature that already works is a luxury you can't afford when you haven't practiced your presentation or tested the full flow. shipped and rough beats polished and unfinished every time.

## the fix

set a "code freeze" time — usually 1-2 hours before presentations. after that, you're only fixing critical bugs and prepping the demo. no new features, no refactoring, no "just one more thing." the time you save is better spent on [[practice-presentation-once|practicing the presentation]] — because [[pitching-matters-as-much-as-product|the pitch matters as much as the product]]. make sure you're [[match-the-theme-track|polishing the right thing]], and watch out for the [[just-one-more-feature-loop|"just one more feature" loop]] — perfectionism's cousin at the feature level.