I totally understand. When I have a project with a months timeline that I know can be done more quickly, I spend a lot of up front time exploring areas that might be helpful, or might just be interesting on their own. A friend called this process "annealing." It does bring more creative and sometimes breakthrough solutions, but I find we are in a world where development creativity is subjugated to more top down controlled ideas (which can often lead to a 'race to the bottom' for the users in a startup culture focused on exits)