How many times in your life have you seen someone get over their head on doing something quite obviously too hard for them at the time. You may even be guilty of this yourself. But what is it that leads people to taking on challenges beyond their ability and making themselves look completely inept in the process?
Preparation, humility, and human nature.
We'll start off with human nature. Our lifetime is finite and therefore we feel the need to engage in activities that yield us the most benefit. Anything that we perceive to be "not worth our time" we tend to brush aside. It is the human tendency to want to take short cuts. Now granted we live in an ever speeding society where the wants and needs of the individual are higher than ever. We all want to be slim in a week, be experts at a chosen field after spending a day reading a website - we want results, and we want them NOW. After-all, we don't have time to work out for weeks or months, if the beach holiday is in 2 weeks, we also don't have time to study for years and years to truly become an expert. This is baked into our finite existence on this earth and is the fundamental rationale for most of us who embark on a journey expecting to reach the end without going the distance.
Humility is called into question because on our journey to becoming shining beacons of envy, we find it problematic to be seen as under par. Again it's a societal problem as labels are too readily affixed to people as they state their claim to this world. Only by accepting that we are not perfect and that we never will be, can we go on the righteous journey of becoming better at whatever we choose to do. Being humbled is the most important aspect of this journey as it keeps us focused on striving for individual betterment instead of trying to desperately hold on to a weakly formed reputation.
And finally - Preparation - the daunting process of dedicating yourself to be a student for your whole life, grinding the basics, doing the ugly, performing seemingly irrelevant exercises for the greater good. This is by far the most important part of becoming truly good at something you choose and yet, it is flagrantly ignored for the most part. A piano player will spend their early years practising finger exercises, scales, arpeggios and perfecting them to their best ability. It's not all Chopin and Beethoven from the onset. Sure, you could probably brute force teach someone to play a piece and get them to memorise it but it won't have the years of studentship or refinement that comes from a solid foundation.
We don't like doing things that seem irrelevant to our final goal because in our head, that's like wasting time practising something else when you could be practising the thing you actually wanted to do. People don't realise that being good at something requires exponential amounts of time honing basic skill sets. Going back to basics is never pretty, especially concerned to the final product, but it is what gives the final product that depth. Hone your craft first then think about showing it off!