💬 I finished 4 courses and still can't start a project from nothing

I've done 2 Python courses and 2 JavaScript ones. Around 120 hours of video, I checked. Every time I follow along, it feels easy. I type what the teacher types and it works. Then I open a blank editor to build my own thing and I just sit there for 20 minutes. Last Sunday I stared at an empty file for an hour and then watched another video instead. I tried to build a simple to do app with no help. I got as far as a heading. I didn't know where to go next, so I did what I always do. I searched for a tutorial. It was a to do app tutorial. I followed it to the end and felt like a fraud. My cousin says that's called tutorial hell. I'd call it a very comfortable trap. I have 3 ideas written in my notes app. A cricket score tracker, a tip splitter, a quiz. They all feel too small to be worth doing, and also way too big to know where to start. Both of those are true at the same time, which makes no sense to me. I can't be the only one who knows all the syntax but can't write 10 lines alone. So here's what I'm asking. How did you make the jump? Did you start with a tiny project? Did you rebuild something from a tutorial without watching, or just pick any idea and suffer through it? How long did the first thing take? I'm guessing weeks, but I'd like a real number. I'll pick one idea this week and report back, so somebody please hold me to it.

Different angle. I stopped watching courses completely for a month, which felt wrong, but it forced me. I set a rule of 30 minutes a day on my own project, even if I only wrote 5 lines. The blank page stays scary until you've typed something, anything. Even a comment saying what you plan to build. My tip splitter took 11 days, and the maths was the hardest part, not the code.

My first project was a page with my own name, 3 buttons and a colour changer. It took a week and I googled every single line. Still counts, because I understood each line afterwards. The cricket score tracker is a good pick. Build only the part that adds runs, nothing else, then stop. Make it ugly first. I rewrote mine 2 times after that, and it got better each time.