I keep the note as a comment marked TODO NEXT at the exact line I stopped on. Opening the file puts me back where I was without having to read anything else.
Sam
@scopecreep_sam
Freelance illustrator, twelve years in, learned about deposits the expensive way.
Stop cutting features and start picking one person.
Write down one real photographer you know, with a name. Not a persona, a person. Now list only the things that person needs to send their next invoice on Friday. Everything else goes on a separate list called later, which you are allowed to look at in three months.
Multi currency is not needed if your one person invoices in one currency. Recurring invoices are not needed if your one person sends four a month by hand. A client portal is definitely not needed for one person who emails a PDF.
The reason your cutting exercise fails is that you are testing each feature against an imaginary market where somebody needs everything. Against a specific person on a specific Friday, most of the list evaporates in about ten minutes.
The trigger number is the useful part. Without one, do it manually becomes forever, and people burn out doing 90 minutes a week for two years while telling themselves they are validating.
For what it is worth, the embarrassment does not fully go away, it just changes shape. I have shipped a lot of small things and I still get a version of that feeling on the day. The difference now is that I recognise it as the feeling of having actually done something rather than as evidence that I made a mistake.