I think the huge picture is pretty important to look at. If we know the goal is far away, then we know that current projects are not going to get their usefulness from solving the whole problem. But that's fine, there are plenty of other uses for projects. Among others:

• Early attempts can serve as landmarks for following ones, to help understand the problem.
• Projects might work on implementing pieces that seem potentially useful given the big picture, like scaling with the skill of an externally-given world-model (and then this list can be applied to those sub-problems).
• Blue-sky research on things that seem to have potential, without a mind to immediate application. Learning that the goal is far away means we want more blue-sky research.
• Projects might be somewhere in-between, trying to integrate a novel development into current well-performing systems.