Why Your Vision Always Outpaces Execution (And How to Make Peace with It)
There's a particularly prickly kind of creative suffering that happens when you can see exactly where you want to be, who you want to be, and what success looks like - but you find yourself frustrated, defeated, and insecure by the gap between that vision and your current reality. You might stumble into a pessimistic scarcity mindset, telling yourself nothing's good enough, you don't have enough, and you're not enough.
As Ira Glass famously observed, our taste develops faster than our talent. We can recognize greatness before we can create it ourselves. Vision is always ahead of execution.
You have brilliant concepts for routines and works, but your current skills can't fully realize them. It's the comedian who can hear the perfect timing in their head but stumbles through the delivery when they hit the stage. It's the writer who knows what powerful prose sound like but cringes at their clunky first drafts. It's the person pursuing health and fitness goals who can visualize their strongest, sexiest self but feels discouraged by today's workout and whose jeans are hosting an uninvited muffin top situation.
Here's the thing: this tension never drops. Never will you stop wanting to be better, never will you meet the goal post, because when you get better, the horizon expands. New opportunities come into view, your new skills open new doors, new networks, new resources and with your shiny new tool kit you're going to push yourself to keep advancing.
Once you've endured this cycle a few times over the gruelling climb to new peaks again and again. You begin to accept the principle of persistence through discomfort, knowing that pushing through disappointing results and circumstances will gradually close the gap, and gradually present new opportunities, and new success.
I'm here now, I’m really feeling the gap today, just exhausted and climbing my ass off to reach that next peak. I’m seeing everything through a critical lens, unsatisfied with my collaborators, my space, my outcomes. But as soon as I start spinning those narratives, I know it's time to realign. Usually I find myself on an early morning dog walk, annoyed at the work ahead of me that day. I imagine what it would be like to come home and just write in a garden instead of going into meetings, answering emails, Slack messages, and sitting in my stuffy office but lucky for me, now I know that when this mental storm kicks up, that is my cue to get my head out of my ass. Hmm I said ass twice in this paragraph. Anyways.
The challenge isn't bridging the gap between vision and execution. It's learning to honour where you are today while working toward tomorrow. It's resisting the deprivation mindset that whispers "You’re only here?! Fuck this place." and instead cultivating appreciation for "We’re already here!! We’re fucking awesome."
Continuing to create despite the disconnect between vision and execution is ultimately what leads to distinct and valuable work. I don't think it needs to be a humiliation ritual either, so if you're really suffering from the tension you'll have to be intentional about resetting the tone.
Let's explore how.
Reframe Your Progress Story
Instead of measuring only against your "ideal vision," create varying progress markers. Your current work isn't a failure, it's evidence you're in the game. It's research. It's networking. The comedian bombing on stage isn't behind schedule; they're gathering essential data about timing and audience interaction that can't be learned any other way. The writer producing dull drafts is building the muscle memory and routine habits that will eventually flow effortlessly into powerful, punchy pieces.
Fun Challenge: At the end of a creative session write down one specific thing you did that your past self couldn't have done. Not what you wished you'd done better - because fuck that - what you actually accomplished that represents growth.
Celebrate Micro-Victories
The gap between vision and execution closes through thousands of tiny consistent improvements, not dramatic breakthroughs. Learn to recognize and celebrate these incremental gains: the joke that got one more laugh than last time, the paragraph that flows better than yesterday's attempt, the workout where you pushed through negative self-talk instead of bailing into a bag of Cheezies.
Fun Challenge: Keep a "wins log" where you document daily or weekly evidence of progress, no matter how small. "Didn't give up after the first bad take," "Asked for feedback instead of avoiding it," "Tried the technique I learned last week" - they all count.
Zoom Out to See Your Trajectory
When you're deep in the frustration of today's limitations you lose perspective on how far you've come already. Regularly review your work from six months or a year ago, and do it with love for past you. Most creators are shocked by how much they've improved when they step back from the daily grind, and most could stand to give past-them a big hug of appreciation for showing up and getting them to today.
Fun Challenge: Schedule monthly or quarterly progress reviews where you compare current work to older work. Create a simple rating system for different aspects of your craft and track the trends over time.
Find Meaning in the Process, Not Just the Product
The vision-execution gap exists because creation is inherently generative. Each piece of work teaches you something that informs the next. Your current "imperfect" result isn't just a stepping stone to better work, it's the mechanism by which better work becomes possible.
Fun Challenge: Before starting any creative work, set a process goal alongside your outcome goal. "I want to experiment with three different approaches" or "I want to stay curious about what doesn't work" gives you something valuable to achieve regardless of the final product. Tinker and play with process over outcome, and you could find new value in that part of your day.
Embrace Strategic Satisfaction
This doesn't mean lowering your standards or becoming complacent. It means recognizing that chronic dissatisfaction is a creativity killer. You can appreciate where you are while still pushing forward. These aren't contradictory states.
Fun Challenge: At the end of this week identify one aspect of your work that you genuinely appreciate about your current skill level. This trains your brain to notice competence, not just gaps.
Your Vision as a North Star
Your ability to envision better work, better living, is a gift. It's your internal guidance system, your North Star. But when that vision becomes a weapon for self-criticism, it stops serving its purpose. The vision should pull you forward with enthusiasm and passion, not push you forward with shoulds and shame.
Fun Challenge: When you catch yourself using your vision to beat yourself up ("I should be able to do this by now"), reframe it as information ("This shows me what I'm working toward") and appreciation ("I'm grateful I can recognize quality. This will help me create it!").
Map Your Micro-Progressions
This is one of my favourite exercises and one of the more powerful ways to honour where you are while staying motivated for what's next. Write out your critical path from today to one year from now. This isn't about creating a rigid timeline or unrealistic journey, it's about visualizing how small, consistent actions compound into real transformation.
Fun Challenge: Take thirty minutes to map out your journey in reverse. Start with where you want to be in twelve months, then work backward through quarterly milestones, monthly targets, weekly habits, and daily practices.
When you can see how today's small effort connects to next year's transformation, it becomes easier to appreciate where you are. You're not just "stuck at the beginning." You're not behind. You're actively constructing your future self, one micro-progression at a time.
The Reset When You're Spiralling
When you catch yourself seeing everything through a critical lens, here's the emergency protocol:
Stop and acknowledge: "I'm in gap-focused mode right now."
List three things that are actually working in your current situation, no matter how small.
Ask: "What would I tell a friend who was in my exact situation?"
Zoom out: "In five years, will I remember today's frustration or today's effort?"
Take one small action that moves you forward without requiring perfection.
Picture yourself on a line stretched between where you are and where you want to be. Below lies the abyss of "not good enough," but up here, every wobble isn't failure, it's the micro-adjustment that keeps you balanced and moving forward. The tension isn't trying to knock you down; it's what keeps the rope taut enough to support your path. Your current work - the imperfect, clunky, and humbling - isn't just preparation for your real work. This is your real work. You are not "just starting out" or "not there yet." You are actively becoming.
Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash