I’ve noticed a pattern that persists through everything I do. It doesn’t matter whether it’s teaching, research, drawing a picture or organizing my apartment.
The only effective way to get anything done is to proceed in a “coarse to fine” manner. If you want to be effective, you need to rough things out before you dive into the details.
This might seem reasonable, but it can be hard to do in practice. The reason is that working on those details can be loads of fun.
So there is a temptation to go there right away, because it feels so good. But the problem is that if you start out working on those glorious details, you might very well need get to a point where you need to throw out everything you’ve already done.
Alas, if any given task doesn’t suit your larger project, you might find yourself going in circles. No matter how much fun it is.