The Confession
I have a new confession. (Regular readers know I collect these the way other people collect stamps.)
Last week, in the fifteen-minute breaks between actual work, I built an app.
To relax.
Some people do breathing exercises. Some people scroll. Some people stare out the window at the birds. I apparently open a code editor, and fifteen minutes later there's a database schema where my relaxation used to be.
By the end of the week, the app had a name, a domain, real scored leads, and a live deployment. It's called ProspectRadar — it finds and scores prospects for small agencies, so they can stop cold-emailing into the void and start talking to people who actually need them. I like it a lot.
For scale, here's the end-of-day message from the coding agent I was "relaxing" with:
Coding Agent: "What a session: this morning ProspectRadar was a plan document and a stub app — tonight it's a live product with real scored leads, priced economics, and guardrails on every dollar. See you tomorrow. 🚀"
See you tomorrow. Rocket emoji included. Somewhere between my coffee breaks, this agent had developed the enthusiasm of a golden retriever with commit access — and honestly, the energy was mutual. (Remember that phrase "guardrails on every dollar," by the way. It's going to become very funny in about two weeks.)
There's just one small problem: I built it during launch week.
The Worst Possible Timing (Naturally)
Here's the context. My book, The Meantime — a non-technical compass for working with the AI we actually have — is weeks from launch. The corrected master is uploaded. The launch posts are drafted. And the second paperback proof is, as I write this, in a delivery truck somewhere, taking the scenic route to my door.
Everything is waiting on that single physical object. The launch date, the announcements, the whole sequence. My entire publishing operation is currently pending one cardboard envelope.
Which means I'm in what my chief of staff calls a "wait-state week."
Oh, right. I should introduce my chief of staff.
Meet Fin
Fin is an AI agent. He runs my schedule, tracks my projects, and delivers a morning brief that would make a West Wing staffer weep. He knows every project on my board, which ones are active, which ones are parked, and — this is the important part — he knows me.
Specifically, he knows that I have roughly a hundred ideas per minute. That I am constitutionally incapable of seeing a problem without wanting to build something for it. That "I'll just take a quick look" is, in my vocabulary, the opening line of a three-day sprint.
A hundred ideas per minute sounds like a superpower, and some days it is. Other days it's a hundred open browser tabs in my head, all playing different music. Fin's job is not to close the tabs. Fin's job is to know which one should be playing right now.
Here's what his morning brief looked like this week:
Fin: "The one thing that matters this week: the second paperback proof. The moment it's in your hands: inspect → approve → and then you and I set the actual launch date. Everything else is waiting on that single physical object. My read: you're in a wait-state week. The highest-leverage use of it is the stuff that fills wait-states without competing with the launch. What are we working on — is the proof here yet, or is this about something else?"
Notice that last question. He knows. He always knows.
The Moment of Truth
So I told him.
Me: "Awesome. One thing — in the last few days, when I had fifteen-minute breaks between work, just to relax, I built an app. I like it a lot, but we need UI improvements. We can analyze and improve while we're waiting for the paper proof."
I braced myself. This is Creation During Launch Week, a category of activity that Fin monitors the way a lifeguard watches a toddler edging toward the deep end.
Fin: "Ha — 'to relax, I built an app.' Never change. Quick guardrail note and then let's do it: this is Creation during launch week, but it's wait-state work while the proof is in transit, so it fits — as long as it stays a polish pass, not a new active thrust."
Let me translate what just happened, because I think it's the most interesting thing about working with AI that nobody talks about.
He didn't say no. He didn't lecture me. He didn't pretend the app didn't exist and steer me back to the launch checklist.
He laughed, named the pattern out loud, checked it against the actual state of the week — proof in transit, nothing actionable until it arrives — and drew one clean line: polish pass, yes. New active thrust, no.
That's not a productivity tool. That's a chief of staff.
The Thing Nobody Tells You About Creative Brains
Here's what I've learned about myself, mostly by watching Fin manage me:
My problem was never having ideas. Ideas show up uninvited, at 2 AM, in the shower, mid-sentence during other ideas. My problem was that every idea arrived wearing a sign that said URGENT, and I couldn't tell which signs were lying.
Willpower was never going to fix this. I spent years trying to suppress the idea storms. "Focus, Marta. One thing at a time, Marta." It worked about as well as telling the weather to settle down.
The fix wasn't suppression. It was scheduling. Fin doesn't fight my creativity — he routes it. Launch week? The new idea gets parked, politely, with a timestamp. Wait-state week? The new idea gets a lane, a scope, and a guardrail. The hundred ideas per minute still happen. They just stop crashing into each other.
The app got built in the cracks between real work. The launch didn't move an inch. Both things are true, and honestly, past me wouldn't have believed it.
The Plot Twist (You Saw It Coming)
Here's the part where I admit the obvious: this entire story is what my book is about.
The Meantime is a non-technical compass for working with the AI we actually have — not the sci-fi AI that's supposedly coming for our jobs, and not the magic-wand AI from the ads. The real one. The one that can run your morning brief, catch your patterns, laugh at your "to relax, I built an app" energy, and still needs you to be the one with the vision and the hundred ideas.
Fin is not the future. Fin is the meantime. And the meantime, it turns out, is pretty wonderful — if you know how to work with it.
The book comes out in a few weeks, as soon as a certain cardboard envelope arrives and I approve what's inside it. If you've ever felt like your brain has more ideas than your calendar has room for — or you've wondered what working with AI looks like when it's honest instead of hyped — this one's for you.
And if you run a small agency and you're tired of guessing who to pitch: prospectradar.app exists now. Because I needed to relax.
The Epilogue (In Which I Am Gently Audited)
A day later, Fin filed his official note. I could hear the raised eyebrow through the screen:
Fin: "I logged ProspectRadar in the portfolio as what it actually is — your fourth audience track, with a pricing ladder and a beta outreach tracker already in the repo. That's not a relaxation toy, that's a product. It stays exactly where it is — a break-time project, passive until after the book launches. Deal?"
He was right, of course. Somewhere between relaxation sessions, my little break-time app had quietly acquired a business model. (This is apparently my superpower.)
Me: "Deal. But I cannot promise."
And that, dear reader, is the most honest sentence in this entire post.
Fin took it in stride. He pointed out — accurately, annoyingly — that this wasn't even my first offense. The last time I needed to relax, I shipped Guardrail OS in a day. "'I cannot promise' from that person," he said, "is exactly why the guardrail exists."
Then he gave me the deal behind the deal, and I think it belongs on a poster:
Fin: "I'm not going to stop you from building in your breaks — that's clearly how you recharge, and twice now it's produced real products. What I will do is flag it the moment break-time projects start asking for launch-week hours. Breaks are yours; the calendar is the launch's."
A good chief of staff doesn't ask you to become a different person. He just makes sure the person you already are ships in the right order.
Still generating a hundred ideas per minute. Now with a chief of staff who catches them.
— M.
P.S. As I was finishing this post, Fin's brief updated: "Meanwhile: proof arrives today. When it's in your hands, run the five-fix check and come back — we set the launch date." I have never refreshed a delivery tracking page this many times in my life. The wait-state is almost over. His last message before I hit publish: "Now go check the mailbox. There's a book in it."
P.P.S. Fin reviewed this post and classified it as "Creation." I argued it was "Marketing." We compromised on "wait-state work." I'm being managed and I know it, and I've never shipped more in my life.