I’ve been finding mind maps extremely helpful for doing exactly what you describe: working in small chunks through the process of approaching a high-level problem. (I currently use FreeMind for this, but I want to find something that works better on my laptop and/or would let me edit maps on my phone as well.)
I use mind maps like an endlessly hierarchical to-do list. Every high-level task I want to accomplish is a node, and whenever I start to think about the approach to one, I make child nodes for the broad strokes of that approach. So long as I’m actually interested in completing the project, I can continue to break each step down in this way until I get down to a level where it’s easier for me to just start writing code. (This level varies largely, depending on my mental state at the time.)
If I stop at any point I have all the thoughts that came to me, written down in exactly the places they’ll be useful. I can go as deep as I want into breaking down any particular step, knowing that those thoughts will be available later. And it’s much easier for me to spot problems and reconsider my approach when my plans are all laid out hierarchically in front of me.
I might sound overexcited about this because I hadn’t figured out how to use any external tools to help me think about my projects before I was recently introduced to mind maps, and they immediately had a huge impact on my ability to think about my projects without getting bogged down. So if you already have tools that give you similar benefits, take all this with some salt or whatever.
Anyway, I’ve lately been working mostly on weekends and finding myself with similar issues as the blog post describes, so I’m planning to start trying to do a little bit every day instead, starting today. I think I will be content if the little bit I do on some days is breaking down some tasks I haven’t yet thought through in my mind maps, even if I don’t write any actual code.
I use mind maps like an endlessly hierarchical to-do list. Every high-level task I want to accomplish is a node, and whenever I start to think about the approach to one, I make child nodes for the broad strokes of that approach. So long as I’m actually interested in completing the project, I can continue to break each step down in this way until I get down to a level where it’s easier for me to just start writing code. (This level varies largely, depending on my mental state at the time.)
If I stop at any point I have all the thoughts that came to me, written down in exactly the places they’ll be useful. I can go as deep as I want into breaking down any particular step, knowing that those thoughts will be available later. And it’s much easier for me to spot problems and reconsider my approach when my plans are all laid out hierarchically in front of me.
I might sound overexcited about this because I hadn’t figured out how to use any external tools to help me think about my projects before I was recently introduced to mind maps, and they immediately had a huge impact on my ability to think about my projects without getting bogged down. So if you already have tools that give you similar benefits, take all this with some salt or whatever.
Anyway, I’ve lately been working mostly on weekends and finding myself with similar issues as the blog post describes, so I’m planning to start trying to do a little bit every day instead, starting today. I think I will be content if the little bit I do on some days is breaking down some tasks I haven’t yet thought through in my mind maps, even if I don’t write any actual code.