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🦆 CHILL THE DUCK OUT

Volume 045: The ambition tax.

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🦆 Cold Open

About a year ago, I wrote my first and only screenplay, a Hallmark-inspired Christmas rom-com, after literally just reading one book about how to write screenplays. I had no training, no experience, just the audacity of someone who thought "how hard could it be?"

Turns out, hard enough that it wasn't particularly good. But also somehow good enough that it finished as a semi-finalist in a screenplay contest, which is the writing equivalent of your participation trophy actually meaning something.

That experience gave me just enough confidence to be dangerous. Enough to think: "Maybe I could actually do this. Maybe I could get better at it. Maybe this could be more than a one-time thing I did on a whim."

So a couple weeks ago, I was accepted into a 12-month writing program. It’s a program designed to take a concept all the way through to a finished movie script that gets pitched to actual producers looking for their next project. Real deadlines. Real structure. Real opportunity to develop something meaningful.

I was excited. This was going to be the year I stopped dabbling and actually committed to the craft.

And then the program started.

Week one arrived with actual assignments and the realization that I'd just added a significant commitment to a life that was already pretty full. Full-time job. Family. This newsletter. The usual adult responsibilities.

So there I was, staring at my screenplay assignment, catching up from the snow days, trying to keep up with everything else, and thinking: "Wait. I chose this. I wanted this. Why does it feel like I'm drowning?"

Welcome to paying the ambition tax.

Nobody tells you about the ambition tax when you sign up for things. When you decide to pursue a goal, everyone focuses on the exciting part. The vision, the end result, the person you'll become. What they don't mention is that ambition costs something. Not just time, but energy, mental space, the bandwidth you were using for other things, the margin that made your regular life feel manageable.

The ambition tax is the gap between "I'm excited to do this" and "oh God, I actually have to do this on top of everything else." It's the overwhelm that shows up when you realize growth doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens in the middle of your regular life, which doesn't pause to make room for your dreams.

And what makes matters worse is that we feel like we're not allowed to struggle with things we chose. If you signed up for it, you're supposed to be grateful and excited, not overwhelmed and exhausted.

But ambition isn't free. Growth costs something. And pretending it doesn't just makes you feel like you're failing at something everyone else handles effortlessly.

They're not handling it effortlessly. They're just not talking about the tax.

So this week, we're talking about why pursuing goals is exhausting even when they're good goals, why starting something new takes more energy than you think, and why it's okay to be overwhelmed by things you chose.

🧠 The Science Bit

Let's dig into why adding something good to your life can feel like drowning, backed by research that basically confirms you're just human trying to do too much.

Goal pursuit literally drains your brain. 

Research on ego depletion shows that self-control and goal-directed behavior draw from a limited pool of mental resources, kind of like how your phone battery drains faster when you're running seventeen apps at once. Studies by Roy Baumeister demonstrate that pursuing new goals requires constant self-regulation, decision-making, and willpower. When you add an ambitious project to an already-full life, you're not just adding time. You're adding cognitive load. Your brain is like "cool, cool, so we're just not sleeping then?"

New habits are expensive, old habits are on autopilot. 

A study in the European Journal of Social Psychology found it takes an average of 66 days for a new behavior to become automatic. Before that, every single instance requires conscious effort and decision-making, which is exhausting. Your existing routines run in the background like they're on cruise control. Your new screenplay program? That's manual transmission on a hill in traffic. Your brain is working way harder than you realize.

We're hilariously bad at estimating what goals actually cost. 

The planning fallacy (researched by Daniel Kahneman) shows that people consistently underestimate time, energy, and resources required for new projects. We think "I'll just write for an hour a week" while completely ignoring that we're also adding research, learning, mental processing, creative problem-solving, and the emotional energy of being terrible at something we care about. It's like saying "I'll just adopt a puppy, how hard could it be?" and then discovering that puppies don't come pre-trained.

The hidden costs add up fast. 

Every decision depletes mental resources (decision fatigue), and ambitious goals require hundreds of micro-decisions. Studies by Kathleen Vohs show that decision fatigue reduces self-control and increases stress. Plus, economic research shows that choosing one thing means psychologically feeling the loss of not choosing another. When you work on your screenplay, you're actively not relaxing, not seeing friends, not doing seventeen other things. Your brain keeps a running tab of everything you're sacrificing, like the world's most depressing accountant.

Ambitious people are just... more stressed. That's the deal. 

Research in Personality and Individual Differences found that people with multiple meaningful goals report both higher life satisfaction AND higher stress. They're a package deal. You don't get to be ambitious without paying the stress tax.

🍟 This Week’s Happytizer

This week, instead of trying to handle your ambition effortlessly or feeling guilty about the tax, I want you to acknowledge it, plan for it, and give yourself some grace.

Here's how:

1. Name what you're actually adding.

Be honest about what your new goal actually costs. Not just the time on your calendar, but the mental energy, the decision-making, the learning curve, the emotional bandwidth.

When I signed up for the screenplay summit, I thought I was adding "a few hours of writing per week." What I actually added was: learning new story structure, making creative decisions, processing feedback, managing the anxiety of being a beginner, and the mental space required to think about it even when I'm not actively working on it.

Name the real cost. It's way higher than you planned for, and that's normal.

2. Expect the first month to be chaos.

Research shows it takes 66 days on average for a new behavior to become automatic. That means the first two months of pursuing any new goal are going to feel like controlled chaos while your brain builds new pathways.

Stop expecting yourself to have it figured out immediately. The ambition tax is highest at the beginning.

3. Lower the bar somewhere else.

You cannot add a major new commitment without something else getting less attention. That's just math. You have finite time and energy.

Look at your life and deliberately choose what gets a lower bar while you're paying the ambition tax on this new thing. Maybe your house is messier. Maybe you're ordering takeout more. Maybe you're not responding to texts as quickly. Maybe this newsletter is shorter some weeks (hi, it me).

Pick what gets less, or life will pick for you and you'll feel guilty about it.

4. Practice saying "I'm overwhelmed AND this is worth it."

Both things can be true simultaneously. You can be struggling with something you chose. You can be exhausted by something you're excited about. You can want to quit and want to continue in the same breath.

Stop treating overwhelm as evidence that you made the wrong choice. Sometimes overwhelm just means you're doing something hard that matters.

5. Build in actual recovery time.

Ambitious goals are endurance events. You can't sustain high cognitive load without breaks. Research on productivity shows that rest isn't optional; it's when your brain processes, consolidates, and prepares for the next push.

Schedule actual downtime. Not "I'll rest when I'm done" (you're never done). Real, planned recovery where you do nothing ambitious at all.

6. Check in on your why.

When the ambition tax feels too high, revisit why you're paying it. Not in a "suck it up" way, but in a "does this still matter?" way.

Sometimes the tax is worth it because the goal is meaningful. Sometimes you realize the tax is too high for this particular goal right now. Both answers are valid.

Ask yourself: Knowing what this actually costs, is it still worth it to me? If yes, keep going and stop feeling guilty about the cost. If no, give yourself permission to adjust or walk away.

Permission slip for the week: You are allowed to be overwhelmed by goals you chose. You are allowed to find growth exhausting even when it's meaningful. The ambition tax is real, and paying it doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. It really just means you're doing something worth doing.

Reflection questions:

• What ambition tax are you currently paying? (What goal is costing you more than you expected?)

• What are you giving less attention to in order to pursue this goal? Is that okay with you?

• When you're overwhelmed, is it because the goal isn't worth it, or because you're expecting yourself to pay the tax without feeling it?

💬 Tell me about your ambition tax

What goal are you pursuing that's costing more than you expected? What's the tax you're paying right now?

📩 [email protected]

If this made you feel less alone in the overwhelm of pursuing something meaningful, share this with someone else who's paying the ambition tax... they probably need to hear that struggling with their goals doesn't mean they're failing.

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🫶 Duckin’ Done

That's Volume 045.

Here's to paying the ambition tax, acknowledging that growth is expensive, and remembering that being overwhelmed by what you chose just means you're becoming something more.

Until next time: breathe deep, expect the tax, and chill the duck out.

Jason

🔬 Behind the Curtain

Research by Roy Baumeister on ego depletion demonstrates that self-control and goal-directed behavior deplete limited cognitive resources. Studies in the European Journal of Social Psychology show new behaviors take an average of 66 days to become automatic. Daniel Kahneman's research on the planning fallacy shows people systematically underestimate time and resources required for new projects. Studies by Kathleen Vohs demonstrate decision fatigue reduces self-control and increases stress. Economic research shows awareness of opportunity costs increases stress and reduces satisfaction. Research in Personality and Individual Differences found that goal ambition correlates with both higher life satisfaction and higher stress levels.