[matfil]

I'm also in the "breaking things down doesn't really help" camp, so while I recognise that it works for some people, I do think it's possible that "just break things down even further" isn't necessarily the right approach for everyone. A possible explanation for this is that when tasks are truly bite-sized, the regret of "I could have finished X this morning" just gets more intense. And actually, having some slack time and some time spent standing back and reflecting turns out to be really important to me in itself.

The thing I find most helpful is to make sure that there are always several parts of the system that I'm actually working on. This means I've got a choice of what to work on today (autonomy!) and can somewhat context-switch my way around the awkward bits (which sometimes get less awkward after a few days on the back burner). Don't get carried away with this (spending all your mental cycles deciding what to do next won't help, either), but it's worth a try. It's one of the things that makes me love largish solo projects.