Two failure modes, opposite causes, same result: wasted time.

Over-thinking: too much planning, not enough building.
Over-doing: building without enough design, creating work that has to be redone.

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The Quote

“We probably worked too much while thinking too little.” — Revenge of Tutankhamun (LD36) [1]

This team coded intensively without sufficient design grounding. Work got built, then had to be rebuilt or cut when design decisions caught up. The problem was not effort. It was effort applied before the target was clear.

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Over-Doing

Building without design means systems get implemented for a mechanic that changes, art gets created for a direction that shifts and level design happens before the core loop is proven. None of this is necessarily wasted in hindsight, but it costs iteration time that is hard to recover at 48-hour scale.

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Over-Thinking

The opposite problem: the team talks, plans and debates instead of building. Hours pass. Nothing is in the engine. This looks different from AP #1 (overthinking in concept phase), which is specific to ideation. This pattern appears throughout the jam: design conversations that run long, architecture debates that stall implementation and “what should we work on” discussions that eat the hours they were supposed to protect.

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The Rhythm That Works

The antidote is not more planning or more doing. It is alternating between them:

30 min design/planning → 2 hours building → review → repeat

Short planning windows create clear targets. Build windows have direction. Reviews catch drift before it compounds. Hyper Holomayhem ran this kind of day-by-day prioritization naturally and it kept them on track through the full 48 hours. [1]

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Fix

BP #2 — Concept Lock on Day 1: locking the target early prevents over-doing in the wrong direction.

BP #1 — Time-Box Ideation: fixed windows prevent debates from consuming build time.