[mindcrime]

I've always just called it "rabbit holing" and I'm guilty of having a problem with this as well. That said, I do still manage to get stuff done, so clearly I manage to break out of the recursive rabbit hole process at some point. What I can't do is tell you that I have any kind of definite / deterministic / repeatable process for managing this tendency. I usually just reach a point where I'm like "OK, enough is enough, time to start building." Maybe it's just that my innate tendency to build balances out with my innate tendency to research at some point, and when they hit equilibrium, I'm able to shift gears? I honestly don't know.

[robinrheem]

Going too deep in the rabbit hole feels like procrastinating sometimes. I also do get stuff done but mostly when a hard deadline is set. So I tend to go into the rabbit hole until I only have a few days left. I also have good feelings since I love studying about things.

I did an experiment on myself where I just design a project and start implementing it right away without any research. When I get trapped, I just did a quick Google search and solved the problem right away instead of trying to study about other solutions or other variables about the problem. I got the project done rather quickly but code quality, solutions that came from the top of my head weren't that impressive. I know iterating will enhance quality, but before I iterate I need to study better solutions or at least research to get ideas for better solutions in order to iterate.

The result of that experiment was just that I was able to get things done a bit quicker if I just did things without studying and only "find solutions" when I encounter problems. Going deeper needs knowledge, but when to start building again when I acquire "enough"?