&gt; What I have found is that the subconscious will resist taking action on something perceived to be important until it&#x27;s worked out an appropriate approach.<p>Yup, that&#x27;s why whenever I get stuck on the high-level design, I&#x27;ll often start doing some of the small sub-tasks for which I&#x27;m highly-confident will be a part of the end-solution, and for which I&#x27;m highly confident that I know the interface they&#x27;ll need, no matter what high-level approach is taken.<p>That extra domain work on the sub-tasks often feeds back to helping with the high-level planning too.<p>This, combined with abstract non-functional high-level prototypes will attack the problem from both the top and bottom. Hopefully you eventually complete the task when you meet somewhere in the middle.