The legitimacy loop

The loop runs like this. You want to do a thing. You notice you do not yet have standing to do it. So you acquire standing: read the literature, build the framework, take the course, write the survey. Each acquisition is genuinely useful and each one reveals the next thing you are missing, because that is what learning does.

At no point does it feel like avoidance. That is the whole trouble. Avoidance feels like avoidance; this feels like diligence, and it produces artefacts, and the artefacts are good.

The exit is not more discipline. It is a rule about order: the thing gets made first, badly, and the preparation is allowed only in response to a specific failure the bad version actually had. Preparation answering a hypothetical failure is the loop wearing a lab coat.