I started working on quite a few different projects in the past, whether in my personal or professional life, and the beginning often felt overwhelming. I did not know enough, or did not have a specific enough idea. There were too many moving parts. Pick your poison.
I noticed over the years that this feeling came from taking on too much at once. When you don’t even know where to start, and think about too many things at once, your brain just stops.
To solve this, I have strived to start from a single, very small point: The seed.
This seed is the minimum amount of the project you have to complete to create its core. You probably will want to expand on it before making it available to other people, but you will be able to build on this core more easily.
This is a phenomenon that can be observed in optical physics, where you are growing signal out of the noise by giving it a weaker signal to latch on. You also observe it when growing crystals, where you create a lot of very small crystals, then choose the best you can find and use it as a base to grow a much bigger one.
Getting this seed is not easy though. It has to be as good as possible, and it will determine the quality of what will grow on it. Keep in mind that it will never be perfect, and this will probably show. You may have to recreate a better seed from the experience you gained from the first one, which is now serving as the seed of a seed.