Breaking Work Into Small Tasks
Big projects aren't actually big — they're many small tasks stacked together. Learning to break work into these smaller pieces is essential for staying productive and for working effectively with AI coding assistants.
What Makes a Good Task?
A task is one clear thing to build or do. Good tasks share these qualities:
- Specific — You know exactly what you're building
- Completable — You can finish it in one coding session
- Testable — You can verify it works
- Independent — It doesn't require other unfinished work (when possible)
"Build the backend" is not a task — it's a project. "Write a function that fetches a single stock price from the API" is a task.
Why Small Tasks Matter for AI
AI coding assistants work best with focused, specific requests. When you ask for something small and well-defined, the AI can give you precise, useful code. When you ask for something vague and large, you get generic code that needs heavy modification.
Compare these prompts:
Too big: "Build me a stock data fetcher"
Just right: "Write a Python function called get_stock_price that takes a ticker symbol as a string, calls the Alpha Vantage API, and returns the current price as a float"
The second prompt gives the AI everything it needs to generate exactly what you want.
Ordering Tasks by Dependency
Some tasks depend on others. You can't parse an API response before you've made the API call. You can't display formatted output before you have data to display.
When breaking down a project, think about what must exist before what. This creates a natural order:
Stock Data Fetcher - Task Breakdown:
1. Set up project folder and virtual environment
2. Get API key from provider
3. Write function to fetch single stock price
4. Parse JSON response to extract price
5. Handle API errors gracefully
6. Accept stock symbol as command-line argument
7. Format and display output nicely
8. Add support for multiple symbols
Each task builds on the previous ones. By the time you reach task 8, you have a working foundation.
One Session, One Task
A good rule of thumb: each task should be completable in one coding session. If you estimate a task will take multiple days, it's probably multiple tasks disguised as one.
Breaking it down further isn't a sign of weakness — it's a sign of experience. Professional developers spend significant time on task breakdown because they know it makes the actual coding faster and smoother.
Tasks Become Commits
Here's a bonus: well-defined tasks map naturally to Git commits. Each completed task is a logical checkpoint you can save. This gives you a clear history and safe points to return to if something breaks.