Strings of small successes also provide fertile, solid ground for successful pivots as more is learned. An endless set of reworked plans toward overly grandiose goals can be a barren pivot quagmire.
Agree. And even smaller. Reaching small goals give you a positive rush that allows you to take on a bigger challenge and not get depressed attempting it while sitting idly by and doing nothing.
Let's say you put off cleaning up your office. You've dreaded doing it for the longest time. One day you come in and you make serious progress on that. You feel great you're all pumped up (even though in a sense you haven't accomplished anything that anyone else would view as great (maybe your mother possibly but that's about it, right)). So you complete this really small "goal". And you are all jacked up and are ready to take on something else more serious that you have put off doing.
Another example might be to cure a programming block by writing some shell script that does something you want to do that automates something. It easily accomplish-able in one sitting and provides immediate benefit. You are then in the flow to go onto tackling something larger. It's like a warm up.
I like to intersperse my day (and am lucky to be able to do so) forking from one thing to another thing. Anything that I have put off doing I can generally get myself into the groove of doing by doing something that while I might not like to do I can "accomplish". (Well, most of the time.)
Interesting. Thanks for that comment. I'd like to hear more of what others experience whether similar to what you feel or what I stated. I would consider myself a workaholic and prefer to do something rather than lounge around. To me doing nothing or relaxing generally feels negative with only a few exceptions or rationalizations.
Thinly slicing a software project is also the only way I can produce a schedule that is remotely plausible, since easy task (half day) + easy task (half day) != easy project (half day).