I just read a great quote about this in an Italo Calvino novel:
"If I think I must write `one` book, all the problems of how this book should be and how it should not be block me and keep me from going forward. If, on the contrary, I think that I am writing a whole library, I feel suddenly lightened: I know that whatever I write will be integrated, contradicted, balanced, amplified, buried by the hundreds of volumes that remain for me to write"
Italo Calvino was noted as being of great inspiration to Jonathan Blow (as a relative point of interest on the OP's question)
I think during one of the Braid 20th anniversary podcasts[0] he talks to it which I loved listing to (from a historic viewpoint; well moreso than a game dev/design)
"If I think I must write `one` book, all the problems of how this book should be and how it should not be block me and keep me from going forward. If, on the contrary, I think that I am writing a whole library, I feel suddenly lightened: I know that whatever I write will be integrated, contradicted, balanced, amplified, buried by the hundreds of volumes that remain for me to write"