Being too ambitious is a clever form of self-sabotage
Source: maalvika.substack.com
This essay explores how ambition, when unchecked, can morph into a seductive form of avoidance that halts creative progress. The author argues that the perfection imagined before beginning a project often becomes a psychological trap, creating a taste-skill gap—where one’s ability to envision excellence far exceeds the ability to execute it. Instead of engaging with imperfection through action, many creators retreat into planning and fantasizing, mistaking mental rehearsal for actual work due to neural reward systems that treat imagined achievement like real accomplishment.
Drawing on examples from psychology and education, including a photography experiment by Jerry Uelsmann, the piece illustrates how mastery is born not from striving for flawless output but from volume, repetition, and interaction with reality. Social media further complicates this by glamorizing finished products while obscuring the messy process behind them, reinforcing an illusion of effortless mastery and discouraging beginners from embracing failure as essential.
The author calls for reclaiming the “beginner’s privilege”—the permission to create badly, learn through doing, and lower the stakes—to overcome the paralysis of high expectations. Through vivid anecdotes and cultural reflections, the essay reframes struggle not as evidence of inadequacy but as the terrain where true learning and creativity thrive. Ultimately, it’s a call to embrace flawed attempts as the path toward meaningful work and to move from theorizing into tangible creation.