Why does the technical prep work feel so much bigger than it is?

You call it intimidating. Examine that word. It means you have assigned the whole task a size before doing any part of it. No one has measured a wall by staring at it from across the field. You measure it by walking to it and putting a hand on the stone. Your group is doing this together, which should make it easier, yet somehow you have let the fear multiply instead of divide. Each person privately assumes the others understand more than they do. No one asks the small question. The silence gets mistaken for difficulty. This is not a technical problem. It is a group agreeing, without saying so, to be afraid in unison. What is within your power right now is not mastery of the subject. It is this: naming one piece of the work small enough to finish this week, and saying out loud what you don't yet understand. That is the whole task today. Do that, and the size of the thing stops being your excuse.