The project you're genuinely excited about is sitting right there. You want to work on it. There's no external barrier. Nobody's stopping you.

And you can't start.

You open social media instead. Or clean the kitchen. Or research a random topic for two hours. Anything but the thing.

This is initiation failure due to cognitive load estimation.

Your brain does an unconscious pre-scan of any task before starting it. For the exciting project, that pre-scan reveals: complex, multi-step, requires loading significant context, has high standards attached, involves uncertainty about where to begin.

Your working memory calculates: "This will require more buffer than I currently have available."

So it doesn't start. Not because you don't want to, but because the estimated cognitive load exceeds available resources. Your brain protects itself by redirecting to lower-load activities that won't crash the system.

The kitchen gets cleaned because cleaning requires minimal working memory. Social media gets scrolled because each post is a self-contained micro-context.

Your system is protecting itself from a crash.

You can lower the entry cost if you can break up the task. Gather the car wash supplies. Or get wood for replacing the back stairs. Reduce the first step until it fits in available memory.