Below are some prompts and exercises to help you find structure to get started.
Review
What are you actually trying to accomplish? Describe the outcome without worrying about how you're going to get there.
What do you already know about the path? What steps, however small or uncertain, can you already see?
What feels like the biggest barrier to starting? Lack of information, too many options, fear of choosing wrong, the size of the task, something else?
What would happen if you chose the wrong place to start? How reversible is that decision, really?
What is the smallest thing you could do that would give you more information?
Practice
Box It Up: take everything currently floating around in your head (tasks, ideas, questions, research, possibilities, loose ends) and put each one into one of three boxes:
Things I Can Do Now
Things I Can Do Soon
Things I Can Do in the Future
Don't worry about getting the categories perfect. The goal is to get everything out of your head and give it a place to live.
Table of Contents : imagine your project is a book. What would the chapters be? Give your project a beginning, middle, and end, then break each chapter into the pieces it would need. You don't have to know all the content yet, just build the structure that will hold it.
Scaffolding: imagine you're building a house before the walls go up. What are the few essential supports your project needs to stand on? Identify the 3–5 foundational pieces, then build those before worrying about anything else.