> You, my friend, are suffering from Procrastination.

1000X this. I recognized this immediately because I see the same pattern in my own behavior. OP starts out doing a bunch of things that will need to be done eventually for the project to succeed, but that are essentially a waste of time and other resources at the initial stage. OP does this (I do too!) because those steps are familiar, easy, and very well defined relative to actually working on the project. Actually making progress on a novel project falls outside our comfort zone. Stop procrastinating.