This is my approach as well, and I think it's generally considered a best practice in engineering, at least on the software side.
When faced with what sounds like an insurmountable,"where the heck do I even begin?" type of challenge, I like to slice it up and get the obvious bits working, just to build confidence & domain knowledge, while my brain autonomously digests the main problem.
When faced with what sounds like an insurmountable,"where the heck do I even begin?" type of challenge, I like to slice it up and get the obvious bits working, just to build confidence & domain knowledge, while my brain autonomously digests the main problem.