People keep showing me massive specs and proposals: polished diagrams, elaborate systems, everything supposedly thought through on paper. Give Claude or GPT free rein and they'll sketch out anything you ask for.
Want to know how many of these actually got built? Zero. I've tracked this deliberately — someone walks away with their beautifully designed spec, shops around for a cheaper vendor, and then... silence. Because it's a textbook case of a spherical cow in a vacuum. On paper everything looks clear, but nobody has actually worked out how it plays out in reality.
Start small, not big
I tell everyone the same thing: don't jump straight into building a huge system. Get a subscription, grab a beginner's guide, and start knocking out your small daily annoyances — the ones that actually drain you from morning to night.
A month later, you'll look at your grand master plan with fresh eyes, and there's a good chance you'll realize you never needed it in the first place. Clear the clutter first — the strategy will show up later, once you actually have the headspace to think about it.
The real fix
If you're sitting on a massive spec that refuses to turn into a working system, chances are it can be broken down into pieces — and you can ship the first small piece this week.