Prove the concept

When starting a new task, find the simplest way to prove the concept.

Investigate upfront and evaluate potential approaches.

What's the smallest or quickest thing you could do to validate an idea?

It could be a small script that you can run and verify something works before moving it to its correct place within your application or creating a first implementation with hard-coded data that you refactor once you've proven the concept.

If you can't, you'll know it won't work without investing a large amount of time and you can move on to the next potential approach.