There’s this well-meaning but insidious behavior that I’ve frequently come across in situations in my life. It’s stuck out to me so much that I’ve actually written two separate journal entries about it, half a year apart. So today I wanted to discuss what I call “dangerous daydreaming.”

The concept is exactly as it sounds. For me, it occurs when I’m just starting out on a new project, whether it’s personal, work, volunteer — any kind, really. The important part is that it’s new — there’s a bunch of ideas, and now we’re getting ready to make things a reality.

At this point, from my experience, someone will almost always begin to daydream. They take your plans and extrapolate them into grandiose accomplishments. “Imagine what would happen if this got big,” they’d tell you.

Here’s a quick example from my experience. A community organization I volunteer for introduced the idea of creating a youth podcast, so a group of other teens and I started working on it. The moment we made even a bit of progress on the project — at that point, we had created album art and were beginning to figure out how to upload episodes to streaming services — our volunteer director got really excited. He started talking about loads of young people listening to our podcast, about us touring high schools and holding live shows and becoming big.

Essentially, we all got drunk on that fantasy: what if this became insanely successful? Now, this wouldn’t have been a problem if the project was already established, because at that point we’d have a successful system to follow and daydreaming wouldn’t matter. But for new projects, this type of daydreaming is not productive, nor is it helpful.

First, the act of imagining the outcome makes you, psychologically, feel like you’ve already accomplished it. You’re therefore more likely to lose motivation for that task once the time comes to actually put in the effort.

The second problem is that fantasizing naturally sets you up for disappointment. There’s nothing wrong with setting big goals – and failure is all part of the game – but with daydreaming, goals become so much larger-than-life that they raise your hopes to an unrealistic degree. The crash that subsequently happens – when you realize you aren’t anywhere close to achieving your daydream – can be extremely demoralizing.

Finally, and most importantly, it distracts you from focusing on what’s in front of you: the actionable tasks you need to finish. Take my podcast example – we hadn’t even released our first few episodes. Why bother thinking so far ahead and dreaming about the possibilities when there’s concrete work to be done right now? Take it one step at a time.

It’s like when you commit to a new habit and immediately start fantasizing about the results. For instance, sometimes I’ll get the urge to learn a new language, and I’ll immediately start to picture myself conversing or impressing someone – before I’ve even begun to learn it. The problem with approaching tasks like this is that the reward and validation gets tied to the result, instead of to the process. If you focus on only the result and allow that to drive you, you’re not going to get far.

Daydreaming can be a fun pastime in certain situations, but I refuse to indulge in it when I’m first starting out on any serious project. It negatively impacts productivity and sets you up for disappointment. It’s better to focus on the process – what you’re doing in the present, and what you can improve on – than to focus on the end result. The most important thing is to get the immediate, actionable items in front of you done first. Just keep making slow, solid progress, and shrug off the people who distract you with wishful thinking.