Expectations Kill

Expectations Kill

I think expectations quietly ruin a lot of things.

Sometimes someone sees one good thing you did and immediately creates this version of you in their head.

Smart.

Reliable.

Talented.

Technical.

Ambitious.

The person who will obviously carry the project.

And then reality happens.

You are still the same person.

But maybe you don't care about that particular thing.

Maybe you're tired.

Maybe you're lazy that week.

Maybe you're not prepared.

Maybe you just want to pass and go eat somewhere after class 😭

And suddenly you've disappointed someone without ever promising them anything.

I think college taught me this really clearly.

The mini project

Back in college, we had to do a mini project.

One of my classmates asked me to form a team with her.

Another girl joined too.

So initially it was basically a group of girls and me.

Imagine me 😭

Later another guy joined.

I don't even properly remember who first came up with the final project idea anymore, but I remember being involved in deciding it.

And I think there was probably some expectation that I would build something really good.

By then, people knew I could code.

I was already building things outside class.

So maybe the thought process was:

Tejas knows software. This should be easy.

Fair.

There was only one problem.

I did not care.

At all.

My goal was incredibly advanced

Pass.

That was it.

Not:

build the best project.

Not:

impress the faculty.

Not:

put it on GitHub.

Not:

turn it into a startup.

Just:

pass the project and go eat.

That was genuinely my roadmap.

And that's pretty much what happened.

We built something.

Presented it.

Passed.

Done.

From my point of view?

Success.

From the point of view of someone who expected me to build something crazy?

Maybe not.

Then came the major project

Final year.

The "important" one.

Again, the team was mixed.

Two girls, two boys.

I was the one who brought the second guy into the group.

And again, I remember getting multiple offers from people to join their teams.

Which is kind of funny in retrospect.

Clearly some people thought I would be useful.

And there was one thing I remember thinking at the time.

The person who had asked me to form the mini-project team with her the first time didn't ask me again.

And in my head I was like:

damn, maybe I lowered expectations real fast 😭

Maybe that wasn't the reason at all.

Could've been anything.

Maybe the group was already formed.

Maybe she wanted different teammates.

I genuinely don't know.

But in my head it was funny.

First project:

let's get him, he knows programming

Second project:

yeah maybe not

Fair enough.

The funniest part is I didn't even choose the major-project topic

Someone else in the group did.

I basically went:

yeah sure, let's do that.

Again, this was not some deep research-driven thing for me.

I was mentally done with college.

I wanted the degree.

I wanted to move on.

So we took the topic and started building.

And for a lot of it?

I basically vibe coded.

😭

Not in some carefully planned architecture-heavy way.

More like:

this needs to work.

Build.

Test.

Break.

Fix.

Next thing.

Does it work?

Good enough.

Move on.

That was the energy.

And honestly, I could've done more

That's the important part.

It wasn't that I had hit my technical ceiling.

Far from it.

I could've put way more thought into it.

Could've made it more interesting.

Could've polished it more.

Could've built something much more technically ambitious.

I just didn't care enough.

That's the part people usually don't distinguish.

Capability and motivation are not the same thing.

Someone can be fully capable of doing something impressive and still produce something average because they simply weren't emotionally invested in it.

That was basically me.

Then came evaluation day

This was around the period when everyone was obsessed with AI.

And teachers absolutely loved hearing that a project had AI in it.

You could almost feel the reaction.

Project without AI:

okay

Project with AI:

WOW

😭

Now, to be clear, there were genuinely really good AI projects.

I'm not saying there weren't.

There were plenty of people who built cool stuff and actually put serious effort into it.

But there were also a lot of projects where "AI" basically meant using an existing API, wrapper, external model or library and putting some interface around it.

Which is still valid engineering.

I'm not saying it's fake.

I just personally didn't want to add AI purely because it sounded impressive.

If it genuinely helped the project, fine.

If it existed only so we could say:

look, AI

nah.

That would've felt cheap to me.

And one evaluator basically said anyone could build it

😭

Brutal.

But the funny thing is...

I couldn't even be offended.

Because somewhere inside my head I was thinking:

yeah, probably

I wasn't standing there thinking:

how dare you insult years of groundbreaking research.

Bro, I had vibe coded most of it.

I knew exactly what level of effort had gone into it.

So the criticism didn't feel like some huge injustice.

It felt more like:

yep, fair

This is where expectations become really interesting

Imagine the exact same project was built by someone who had barely coded before.

Suddenly people might say:

wow, you built this yourself?

But because people already thought I knew software, the benchmark was different.

Same output.

Different expectation.

Completely different perception.

That's what expectations do.

They change the emotional value of an outcome.

I think my teammates probably had expectations too

Again, I can't speak for them.

Maybe they were perfectly happy.

Maybe not.

But I wouldn't be surprised if the initial assumption was:

technical side is sorted, he knows this stuff

And yes, technically we did get it done.

We passed.

Everything worked enough.

But if the expectation was:

he's going to turn this into some crazy final-year project

then yeah...

sorry 😭

Wrong mood.

College-project me had one KPI.

Did we pass?

Yes.

Great.

Where are we eating?

This happened outside projects too

There was another moment in college that perfectly captures this.

Someone thought I was smart and asked me to teach him before an exam.

Sounds nice.

Except...

I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW THERE WAS AN EXAM.

😭😭😭

He literally informed me about the existence of the exam by asking me to help him study for it.

Imagine how bad that is.

He comes to me thinking:

this guy probably knows everything

Meanwhile I'm thinking:

WAIT WHAT EXAM

And then somehow I still tried to explain things.

I flopped.

Badly.

I remember feeling embarrassed because you could almost feel the difference between what he expected and what he actually got.

That's the painful part.

If someone already thinks you're clueless and you don't know something?

Whatever.

But if someone thinks you're smart and then watches you completely blank?

Pain.

Being called smart can become a trap

People hear that you're good at something and then suddenly they expect you to know everything around that topic.

You're good at programming?

Cool.

Explain compilers.

Explain operating systems.

Solve this graph problem.

Fix my printer.

Build an app.

Recover my Wi-Fi password.

Bro 😭

Being good at one thing doesn't mean you're some universal technical oracle.

And once people see you as "the smart guy," saying:

I don't know

can start feeling embarrassing.

That's dangerous.

Because "I don't know" is literally one of the most useful sentences you can say.

Parents do this too

Parents can create insane expectations from very little evidence.

You make some money.

Suddenly:

okay, now make ₹1 crore next year.

😭

Like bro, I appreciate the confidence.

But life doesn't work like placing an order.

And the dangerous part is that once that expectation exists, even a good result can feel bad.

Make ₹10 lakh?

Normally:

great.

But if the expectation was ₹1 crore:

failure

Nothing about the ₹10 lakh changed.

Only the reference point did.

That's how expectations can destroy your ability to appreciate progress.

Expectations can make good outcomes feel terrible

This happens everywhere.

You score 90.

Expected 98.

Feels bad.

You get a good job.

Expected a ridiculous salary.

Feels bad.

You gain strength in the gym.

Expected more.

Feels bad.

You build a project.

It works.

Everyone expected something crazy.

Feels mediocre.

The outcome is real.

The disappointment is relative.

That's why expectations are powerful.

But sometimes expectations are completely fair

This is where I have to be honest.

If someone expected more from me in those college projects, they weren't necessarily wrong.

Maybe they'd already seen what I could build.

Maybe they genuinely believed I was capable of more.

And they were probably right.

That's what makes this uncomfortable.

The problem wasn't:

they overestimated my ability

It was probably:

they overestimated how much I cared

Very different thing.

Capability does not create obligation

Just because I can do something doesn't mean I have to care about doing it.

Could I have built a much better final-year project?

Probably.

Did I want to?

Not really.

That matters.

Not everything in life needs maximum effort.

Sometimes the correct goal is genuinely:

good enough

Sometimes you don't need a masterpiece.

Sometimes you just need to finish.

And I don't think that's automatically laziness.

It's prioritization.

But "I could've done better" can also become an excuse

This is the dangerous side.

It's very easy to protect your ego by saying:

I wasn't even trying

Because then every mediocre result is safe.

Failed?

Didn't try.

Bad output?

Didn't care.

Someone else did better?

Could've beaten them if I wanted.

That's bullshit if you do it forever.

At some point, if you keep saying you're capable of more, you actually need to prove it.

Otherwise potential becomes imaginary currency.

You can't spend it.

Nobody hires potential that never becomes output.

Nobody uses software you never built.

Nobody pays for a business you never launched.

Nobody cares about the amazing thing you "could have done."

Eventually:

do it.

College just wasn't where I wanted to prove it

And I'm okay with that.

I don't regret not turning my mini project into some insane product.

I don't regret not stuffing AI into the major project just for the wow factor.

I wanted to finish college.

I finished college.

That was the goal.

I had other things I cared about more.

And I think that's fine.

Not every opportunity needs to become:

THIS IS MY MOMENT

Sometimes passing is enough.

Expectations can ruin relationships too

This doesn't only happen with work.

You meet someone.

They do one good thing.

Now you've built this idealized version of them.

Kind.

Always available.

Emotionally perfect.

Never selfish.

Never moody.

Never stupid.

Then the real person appears.

Flawed.

Inconsistent.

Human.

And suddenly you're disappointed.

But maybe they didn't change.

Maybe your imaginary version was never real.

That's on us too.

People are always building models of each other

Every interaction updates something.

Reliable?

Unreliable?

Smart?

Lazy?

Helpful?

Difficult?

Good under pressure?

Bad under pressure?

You don't control that completely.

People judge output.

They don't have access to your internal explanation.

They don't know:

I could've done way better, I just wasn't interested.

They only know:

this is what happened when we worked together

That's reputation.

And whether we like it or not, it matters.

I think that's what happened with those projects

Maybe some people expected a lot from me.

Then they saw the actual output.

Their model updated.

That is completely rational.

If I didn't deliver something impressive, why should they continue assuming I always would?

Potential is private.

Performance is public.

That's the difference.

This is why I care more about being reliable now

I'd rather someone say:

he doesn't know everything, but if he says he'll figure it out, he usually does

than:

he's a genius

The second one sounds cooler.

The first one is much more useful.

I don't want my reputation to depend on never looking stupid.

That's impossible.

I want it to depend on:

showing up.

Learning.

Delivering.

Admitting when I don't know.

Actually improving.

That's much more sustainable.

Expectations also kill curiosity

If you're expected to be good at everything, being a beginner becomes terrifying.

You try drawing.

You suck.

You try swimming.

You suck.

You try speaking another language.

You sound stupid.

You try sales.

Awkward.

Good.

That's normal.

But if your identity is:

smart guy

then being visibly bad at something feels like exposure.

That can make you avoid new things.

And that's horrible.

You can't learn without spending time looking incompetent.

I think expectations should be intentional

Instead of letting random people silently define success for me, I should decide what I actually want from something.

College project?

Pass.

Job?

Become genuinely good and earn well.

Business?

Build something sustainable and profitable.

Gym?

Actually get the physique I want.

Relationships?

Find someone I genuinely connect with.

Different goal.

Different standard.

Not everything deserves the same intensity.

And sometimes you need to disappoint people

This is something I'm learning.

Someone expects an impossible timeline.

Someone expects you to know something you don't.

Someone thinks you'll become rich immediately.

Someone thinks you'll choose the life they want for you.

Sometimes you just have to say:

no

or:

I don't know

or:

that's not what I want

That's better than silently accepting an expectation and then destroying yourself trying to maintain it.

I probably disappointed people in college

And honestly?

That's okay.

Maybe people expected me to carry those projects.

Maybe they thought I would build something far more impressive.

Maybe someone didn't want to work with me again because of what they saw the first time.

Maybe not.

I'll probably never know.

But if that's what happened?

Fair.

That version of me genuinely wasn't trying very hard.

I cared about other things.

The important part is what I do when I actually care

That's the real lesson.

There are some things where I never want to look back and say:

I could've done something great but I just couldn't be bothered

College project?

Whatever.

My actual life?

Different story.

If I care about something, I want to find out what I'm actually capable of.

That means I can't always hide behind:

I wasn't trying

At some point I need to try.

Fully.

Then accept whatever result comes back.

That's much scarier.

But also much more honest.

So yeah, expectations kill

They can kill enjoyment.

They can kill motivation.

They can make good outcomes feel bad.

They can destroy someone's image of you.

They can make you scared to admit what you don't know.

And they can trap you into living as the person everyone else thinks you should be.

But expectations aren't automatically bad.

Sometimes someone expects more because they've seen what you're capable of.

Sometimes they're right.

The trick is figuring out which expectations actually belong to you.

For some things:

good enough

For some things:

pass

For some things:

I genuinely do not care

And for the few things that matter deeply?

Set the bar stupidly high.

The difference is:

make sure it's your bar.

Because my biggest lesson from those projects wasn't that people shouldn't expect anything from me.

It was that other people's expectations and my own goals were completely different.

They might've been expecting some crazy project.

I was expecting a passing grade and food afterward.

😭

We both got exactly what our expectations predicted.