"actually working on it" hurts so much. I have an idea. I think it will be amazing. I love thinking about it and talking to others about it. Yet every night I watch tv, play games, or anything else except working on the idea.

I can't tell if it's a subconscious fear of failure or just general laziness but I can't even write the first line of code and it's been 3 years since I got the idea.

For general laziness, in the order of importance: fix sleep (consistent wake up time), exercise, diet (cut out sugar and junk food like potato chips and ice cream, soda etc), vitamin D, blood tests, regulate stress, keep track of coffee, meditate, reduce alcohol, take breaks from social media, porn, addictive games, binge watching etc. Read physical books. Go out in nature without phones.

Such things can help immensely with vague laziness. Don't overthink it, there is no magic quick fix and it's not just about this one weird self help trick to fix your mindset. We tend to forget how much we are biological animals on the inside and the animal needs to be kept well.

Start with waking up at the same time and winding down in the evening early enough to sleep enough. It's much easier to get a grip on such concrete things as waking up at a particular time (or not eating added sugar) vs starting the big vague project, staring at the empty console. Once your routine is set up you will find you have more willingness to face and take on difficult tasks of many sorts.

I cannot stress this advice enough. I have ADHD so a healthy routine seemed like anathema to me and it felt like my entire soul would resist it at every turn.

Once I started getting up early at the same time every day, everything else flowed from that positive momentum. I get up meditate, eat, lift weights, then bike to work by 8. I, can crush work all day and I carry that positive momentum all the way till I go to sleep and accomplish many things after work. I have tamed that procrastinating distraction monkey on my back into a tenacious omnipresent will for self improvement.

I'm a classic procrastinator, and it probably is akin to fear of failure.

But more accurately, I find I'm anxious because I have grand ideas of what I want to accomplish, but when I try to do it my ability falls short of my ideals.

The only way to get better though is to just do stuff. So what helps me is giving myself permission to make mistakes and do mediocre work. The next iteration will be better, but for now I just need to make SOMETHING.

Here's what you need to do: ask yourself "what's the smallest thing I can do right now?" Do that thing. Then rinse and repeat.

You mention the first line of code, so I'm assuming you're talking about software. If you're having trouble getting started, it could be because your idea is not clear enough in your mind. How can you get to where you want to go if you don't know where you're going? Creating a low fidelity mockup will help with this. You'll start to have a better understanding of how your product might be used, and then you'll start to see how the domain objects in your project relate to each other. You'll start to see the data requirements and you'll start to see where user actions take place and where API calls should be made. It will be easier to know what to do next if you can get to that point. That mockup can serve as a tool for communication. You'll be able to divide up work and assign it to people. Most of us that decide to be a part of something are just happy enough to be along for the ride. People want to and enjoy helping other people. You just have to let them know how they can.

I have this problem in a big way, too. I haven't permanently cracked it, but I can crack it here and there. Basically when I get free time and notice I'm defaulting to "I'm gonna go <slack off> now", I immediately replace that with, "Actually I'm just gonna do this one thing on that project". Inevitably, I get sucked into the project until something breaks my flow. The more consistently you can do this, the easier it gets because then you develop a sort of "passive flow" where a perpetual background mental process gets pulled farther forward to where you can't wait to get back to working on the thing, whatever else you're actually doing.

And between failure and success, I'm far more scared of success. Failure is demoralizing but at least it means you can put a pin in the thing. Success means people probably now have expectations of you.

Don’t feel bad about not wanting to replace your relaxation time with more work. You enjoy thinking about this idea because thinking is an escape; a distraction from whatever you’re doing in that moment. Actually doing it is not an escape any more, it’s a new problem. Maybe you could test it out without writing any code? Or maybe not - maybe you just need to find a new job or something like that. Or maybe there’s nothing wrong with the occasional daydream?

That's classic subconscious fear of failure.

Just do something stupid that goes in the right direction. Do it this weekend. You know you want to.

Ideas aren't worth basically anything. Just start. http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html

If you can convince yourself of this, then what you have is really not worth anything unless you execute something on it.

If you send me an e-mail and tell me your idea, I'll write the first line of code for you for free to get you started! :)

Talk to your potential customers. Maybe you have doubts that are very real reasons you shouldn't start.