I have to do the same thing. If I spend too much time on everything else, I procrastinate on the hard stuff until I've wasted too much time. If I start with the

I have to do the same thing. If I spend too much time on everything else, I procrastinate on the hard stuff until I've wasted too much time. If I start with the hard stuff, I'm a lot more motivated and productive. That doesn't mean I'm not often paying a lot of attention to the overall design of the code and where/how things are being called. I'll often step up and down the layers to refractor and improve the code surrounding what I'm working on, since that code often has a big effect on how I can implement my changes. However, I'm also in a lucky position where I'm not responsible for the UI or any customer facing stuff. My users are internal services that interface with my APIs, which rarely need to be changed.