I finally made a psychological breakthrough. Sometimes it just takes a while to internalise something you already understand intellectually.

Having a DAW and a permanently set up recording/practice space means you can just sketch ideas, and check whether they even work, before committing the work of trying to get perfect takes for each track.

It's an obvious fact, but actually working that way in music is new to me.

The fact that a DSLR did this for my photography 20 years ago, apparently went nowhere 🤦‍♀️