I often operate this way, that I design and build and run or use constructions in my mind before I feel comfortable committing to sitting down at the computer and making it, or sketching it. I've been made aware, recently, that some people can't picture things in their mind, rotate them, apply physics to them, etc.
One thing about working this way is it's very frustrating to people who operate by documenting in real time, in something like org or Notion. I am not a note taker and I never really have been. I actually find my thinking gets cloudier when I try to document something I personally find "intuitive".
One example of this clash of styles was recently with a manager where he asked me, directly, how could I know how to design something if I hadn't written out the structure yet? How would I know to build space for a feature if I hadn't documented all the features that were required? I told him the requirements should be known, already, by anyone who was thinking about this problem... that for instance anyone who bothers to even imagine a "Create" action would automatically, symmetrically, imagine a "Delete" action and budget for that. He didn't agree and made me write it out anyway.
Good on your manager. Beliefs of personal infallibility are vastly overrated.
Sure, some things come in pairs. Some requirements are immutable and obvious. That's not the interesting part of a design, and if that's all it lists, then yes, you can probably skip writing a ton of detail. (Although current and future team mates are usually appreciative of knowing how something was designed, instead of just having to read the code - it makes it easier to distinguish mistake from intent)
But the meat of a design is in the trade-offs you made, in the choices that could reasonably go several ways. And no, for any reasonably complex system, you can't hold all of those in your head. And worse, if it's a trade-off, your weights may be wrong - your work is part of a larger effort, and you might miss constraints that seem "outside your area" but play into it.
One thing about working this way is it's very frustrating to people who operate by documenting in real time, in something like org or Notion. I am not a note taker and I never really have been. I actually find my thinking gets cloudier when I try to document something I personally find "intuitive".
One example of this clash of styles was recently with a manager where he asked me, directly, how could I know how to design something if I hadn't written out the structure yet? How would I know to build space for a feature if I hadn't documented all the features that were required? I told him the requirements should be known, already, by anyone who was thinking about this problem... that for instance anyone who bothers to even imagine a "Create" action would automatically, symmetrically, imagine a "Delete" action and budget for that. He didn't agree and made me write it out anyway.