I've written about this before. I do have the tendency to focus on the end result from the very beginning. This is fine in most scenarios, except those where you don't exactly know how to get there. Most of the times it happens when I'm working on a side project. These usually tend to be ambitious and quite far outside my abilities and things I have done before. Although at times it can happen when I'm working on my product too. Although it's been far less than it used to be.
It's the reason why I always complete a project if I have a book to follow along with. They break down the steps into small enough pieces to avoid getting overwhelmed from day one. In my latest project I decided to tackle this very problem, not to depend on a book and break down the problem into smaller pieces on my own. It's a lot harder than I thought it would be. Most times I start on the smallest problem that I can solve, but without even realizing I tend to jump ahead.
It happened twice today, once when I was working on building a simulation testing environment for my communication protocol. Very quickly I found myself far too overwhelmed and lost. After a while I took some notes on what I needed to do and decided to tackle them tomorrow.
The same happened when I was working on my product, I needed to create a simple file and folder structure view with the ability to create new folders and upload files to these folders. At first I started out over thinking the problem and got completely stumped. I decided to walk away and let the problem stew in my mind a little. After a couple of hours I was able to create new folders and come up with a simple way to handle this on the server. All I needed was Htmx, I did not even need to use AlpineJs. Which is how I started to solve the problem. After that was done, I started making progress quite quickly. It's not completely done, and I still have a list of things I need to get done for it to be useful. But that first win has boosted my confidence and I am quite certain that I'll be able to get it done. I'm super happy with the end result.
In some ways this is a muscle that needs training, so I'd like to do more of it. First thing tomorrow, I'm going to practice this and continue to practice this till I get a good hang of it. Once I am able to get good at this, I'll be able to build anything I want. That is quite an exciting prospect to me.