Here I am on a Sunday afternoon, watching the AFC Championship during a full-on snowstorm.

The Broncos are hosting the Patriots, and deep down part of me feels like Kansas City should be here. We’ve had a lot of success over the last decade. We’ve built something special. It’s easy, when that happens, to start believing this stage somehow belongs to you.

But that’s not how it works. Instead, the Chiefs sputter all year, and Patrick Mahomes tears the ligaments in his knee and the Chiefs are a footnote on the 2025 NFL season.

All of that is a big reminder that you don’t get to the next game based on last year’s stats. You earn it again, each year, in conditions that aren’t ideal. The Patriots are exemplifying that today. After a nearly 20-year dynasty and a recent trip into NFL oblivion, they’re back hoisting the Lamar Hunt Trophy once again.

That’s been on my mind as I work on CoffeeBreak.

Right now, I’m close. I can see the system. I can explain it. But I can’t quite get it to run end-to-end, on its own, without help.

In the past, I would have pushed harder. Added more features. Told myself it was “good enough” and that we’d clean it up later.

Experience has taught me to resist that impulse.

Right now, CoffeeBreak doesn’t need to do everything. It needs to do one thing really well, end to end, without excuses.

There’s no shortcut around that work. No entitlement. No reputation that carries you forward forever.

Not in football. Not in software.

And definitely not if you want the results to last.