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The Psychological Trap Quietly Destroying Your Photography - Moments of Mood 3.4 · The MOOD Podcast

• 0:00
  Matt Jacob: Some of the most important progress in your photography will never show up anywhere.
• 0:05
  Matt Jacob: No likes, no publication, no visible evidence at all.
• 0:08
  Matt Jacob: And yet, most of us still feel uneasy when we have nothing to show.
• 0:13
  Matt Jacob: A few weeks ago, after an accident forced me into unexpected stillness, I realized just how dependent I'd become on proof.
• 0:22
  Matt Jacob: The other week I found myself sliding along a piece of dirty tarmac on my side, wearing nothing but a t-shirt, some loose trousers and sandals, hoping to stop as quickly as possible from about 30 miles an hour before I did myself or anyone else any life-changing damage.
• 0:45
  Matt Jacob: Thankfully, my 100 kilos of weight helped me stop sooner than expected.
• 0:49
  Matt Jacob: It didn't help the friction of skin on tarmac, though, but I'm lucky.
• 0:53
  Matt Jacob: I'm fine.
• 0:54
  Matt Jacob: Thanks for asking.
• 0:55
  Matt Jacob: Torn rotator cuffs, some deep skin lacerations, and various bumps and bruises.
• 1:01
  Matt Jacob: But all of that is healing, of course, and it could have been far, far worse.
• 1:05
  Matt Jacob: What surprised me wasn't the injury itself, though.
• 1:08
  Matt Jacob: It was what surfaced underneath it.
• 1:10
  Matt Jacob: I ended up uh immobilized far more than I anticipated.
• 1:14
  Matt Jacob: I mean, okay, I'm a middle-aged man who's not as brave or as strong as certainly my wife and female friends proclaim.
• 1:21
  Matt Jacob: But granted, I felt a little sorry for myself.
• 1:24
  Matt Jacob: But I wasn't dramatically immobilized, just that sort of annoying level of immobilization where you're okay, you're not going to die, but you can't really do any of the normal stuff you would do every day.
• 1:35
  Matt Jacob: And that kind of state where the usual scaffolding of one's days just implodes.
• 1:42
  Matt Jacob: First world problems, I know, but I basically couldn't move for a few weeks.
• 1:46
  Matt Jacob: It was the long and short of it.
• 1:47
  Matt Jacob: No exercise, no photography, no podcasts, no doing of anything really.
• 1:52
  Matt Jacob: And as such, no progress.
• 1:54
  Matt Jacob: Just long stretches of stillness interrupted by discomfort and time.
• 1:59
  Matt Jacob: I was on my way to the studio to record when the crash happened.
• 2:03
  Matt Jacob: And one of my first thoughts was, well, I can still make the podcast that was due to record if I just sort this out quickly.
• 2:09
  Matt Jacob: There was probably adrenaline and shock doing their thing, but that really stayed with me.
• 2:14
  Matt Jacob: Later, once hospital visits and initial care were done, a quieter feeling lingered beneath the relief and gratitude that I was, of course, okay.
• 2:22
  Matt Jacob: It was a sense that something was missing, that I hadn't quite earned the day.
• 2:28
  Matt Jacob: Worse still, the days that followed were stripped of any familiar markers of progress and replaced with the singular task of just healing and returning to normality.
• 2:40
  Matt Jacob: Lying there on the gurney, I noticed how quickly my sense of worth reached for motion, output, and evidence, even so soon.
• 2:48
  Matt Jacob: How instinctively I wanted to point to something I'd done for that actual day, not just something that had happened to me.
• 2:55
  Matt Jacob: With a pilot's brain and a lifetime spent inside systems that reward precision, metrics, and outcomes, this is of course familiar territory.
• 3:05
  Matt Jacob: With a pilot's brain and a lifetime spent inside systems that reward precision and outcomes.
• 3:09
  Matt Jacob: This is familiar, every Terry.
• 3:10
  Matt Jacob: I tend to measure everything creativity, productivity, recovery.
• 3:15
  Matt Jacob: Did I improve?
• 3:16
  Matt Jacob: Did I progress?
• 3:18
  Matt Jacob: And while that mindset serves me in many areas of life, it often clashes with the creative part of me that needs space, ambiguity, and time.
• 3:29
  Matt Jacob: Even pain, I noticed, feels easier to tolerate when it could be logged, tracked, and folded into a story of forward motion.
• 3:38
  Matt Jacob: What unsettled me most wasn't the injury, though.
• 3:41
  Matt Jacob: It was how uncomfortable it was to sit with days that left little evidence of progression behind, if any.
• 3:49
  Matt Jacob: And I began to see how deeply that reflex shows up in photography and of course in myself.
• 3:55
  Matt Jacob: We ask similar questions in creative language.
• 3:58
  Matt Jacob: Did I make something today?
• 3:59
  Matt Jacob: Did it get published?
• 4:01
  Matt Jacob: Did it get seen?
• 4:02
  Matt Jacob: Did it register anywhere outside of me?
• 4:05
  Matt Jacob: If it didn't, doubt normally arrives almost immediately.
• 4:09
  Matt Jacob: Was it real work at all?
• 4:10
  Matt Jacob: Did it even count?
• 4:12
  Matt Jacob: Photograph that never leaves a hard drive can start to feel kind of unfinished, almost illegitimate, as though its value depends on being witnessed rather than made.
• 4:23
  Matt Jacob: We live in a culture that trains this reflex relentlessly, where a sleep ring and rest only feels real when the numbers on my app confirm it.
• 4:33
  Matt Jacob: Miss a nap and as if it's never happened.
• 4:36
  Matt Jacob: The body knows otherwise, but the mind increasingly trusts data more than experience, and that plays on the body.
• 4:43
  Matt Jacob: Photography now seems to operate within that similar psychological economy.
• 4:48
  Matt Jacob: If an image is not published, tracked, or validated, we quietly question whether it matters and whether it impacts our photography at all.
• 4:57
  Matt Jacob: There is a difference between putting work into the world to complete this cycle of creation and putting it out there to seek validation or reassurance.
• 5:07
  Matt Jacob: The difference is very subtle, but the intent shapes the meaning and depth and quality, quite frankly, of the work itself.
• 5:15
  Matt Jacob: And this is where the need for proof begins to really hollow photography out from the inside.
• 5:20
  Matt Jacob: When proof becomes this measure, photography turns into more of a destination.
• 5:27
  Matt Jacob: Destinations demand milestones, evidence, and arrival points.
• 5:31
  Matt Jacob: Something visible to point at and say, this is what I achieved.
• 5:36
  Matt Jacob: Sorry to take you away from the episode for a moment, but I wanted to talk to you about something very quickly.
• 5:41
  Matt Jacob: Now, when it comes to photography, the whole infrastructure of the internet rewards speed.
• 5:46
  Matt Jacob: Post more, post faster, be first, be everywhere.
• 5:49
  Matt Jacob: The algorithm doesn't care whether you went deep, it cares whether you showed up yesterday.
• 5:54
  Matt Jacob: And I guess that's not photography specific.
• 5:57
  Matt Jacob: Now, for me, I built my work around a different bet that there are people who would rather go slowly and understand something fully than go fast and understand probably nothing.
• 6:08
  Matt Jacob: That depth is not a liability, that the work you make when you take your time is categorically different from the work you make when you're chasing the feed, maybe, or chasing the algorithm.
• 6:19
  Matt Jacob: Now, the Mood Insiders is built on that same bet.
• 6:23
  Matt Jacob: It's a private community for photographers and visual artists who are serious about the slow work.
• 6:29
  Matt Jacob: We have monthly masterclasses where we actually go deep on craft and thinking.
• 6:34
  Matt Jacob: We have a weekly book club, monthly QA's.
• 6:38
  Matt Jacob: We have the podcast, of course, but ad-free with bonus content.
• 6:42
  Matt Jacob: And we have direct access to me and my team.
• 6:44
  Matt Jacob: It's not another newsletter you'll forget about, not a Discord server full of noise.
• 6:48
  Matt Jacob: It's a room with a small number of serious people and a very clear and supportive focus.
• 6:54
  Matt Jacob: It's just $19 a month.
• 6:56
  Matt Jacob: The link is in the show notes, and I really hope I can see you inside.
• 7:00
  Matt Jacob: But photography, at least the kind that endures, behaves more like a pilgrimage.
• 7:07
  Matt Jacob: There is movement, but no finish line.
• 7:10
  Matt Jacob: The value lies not in arriving somewhere publicly visible, but in what changes internally as you keep walking down that path.
• 7:18
  Matt Jacob: The attention you develop, the patience, the clarity around who you are and what you actually care about.
• 7:26
  Matt Jacob: A pilgrimage offers no daily confirmation that you are doing it correctly.
• 7:31
  Matt Jacob: Some days leave nothing behind at all.
• 7:34
  Matt Jacob: No images worth sharing, no proof of progress.
• 7:38
  Matt Jacob: And yet something is still fundamentally happening.
• 7:42
  Matt Jacob: Your eye is being trained, your tolerance for ambiguity grows, your relationship with the world shifts quietly.
• 7:48
  Matt Jacob: And this is why practice is always important.
• 7:51
  Matt Jacob: But none of this shows up in numbers, yet it's all foundational.
• 7:55
  Matt Jacob: I felt this most strongly when working on longer form projects.
• 7:59
  Matt Jacob: When I may be editing, sequencing, and just sitting and living with the images, the urge to share them is, of course, instinctive, almost physical.
• 8:08
  Matt Jacob: Not because I want attention.
• 8:10
  Matt Jacob: I mean, that's great, but that's not the reason.
• 8:12
  Matt Jacob: But because sharing feels like almost confirmation, a way of saying, this is real, this is happening, this counts.
• 8:19
  Matt Jacob: When that outlet disappears, the work feels heavier and more ambiguous.
• 8:26
  Matt Jacob: And that ambiguity is uncomfortable.
• 8:28
  Matt Jacob: And that discomfort is the point.
• 8:31
  Matt Jacob: During my recent conversation with P Arts on the podcast, you can watch that episode next.
• 8:38
  Matt Jacob: The link is in the description.
• 8:40
  Matt Jacob: There was a moment that lingered long after we stopped talking about all of this kind of stuff on the surface, books, expeditions.
• 8:48
  Matt Jacob: Almost casually, he said that self-doubt is the one thing you need to embrace as an artist.
• 8:53
  Matt Jacob: Not manage, not eliminate, embrace.
• 8:56
  Matt Jacob: And his long-term project in Chile wasn't only about what it was on the surface, the isolation, aging, or disappearance.
• 9:04
  Matt Jacob: It mirrored his own resolved relationship with solitude and anxiety.
• 9:09
  Matt Jacob: The subject wasn't separate from the artist.
• 9:12
  Matt Jacob: It found its way to mirror him.
• 9:14
  Matt Jacob: And that is where self-doubt enters as a productive force.
• 9:17
  Matt Jacob: When the work starts touching something personal, something unfinished within you, certainty disappears.
• 9:25
  Matt Jacob: You no longer stand safely outside the story.
• 9:28
  Matt Jacob: You're implicated in it.
• 9:30
  Matt Jacob: Doubt shows up not because you're weak, but because you are close.
• 9:36
  Matt Jacob: Artists without doubt tend to repeat themselves, and artists with too much doubt implode and collapse inward.
• 9:43
  Matt Jacob: But artists who learn to sit with doubt use it as a compass because self-doubt slows you down.
• 9:50
  Matt Jacob: It forces you to question your motives, your ethics, your assumptions, what you care about.
• 9:57
  Matt Jacob: It prevents you from turning, say, people into symbols or stories or commodities.
• 10:02
  Matt Jacob: And the need for proof and the discomfort of doubt are connected.
• 10:06
  Matt Jacob: The impulse to seek proof is often just fear in a more respectable outfit.
• 10:13
  Matt Jacob: Fear that nothing is happening.
• 10:15
  Matt Jacob: Fear that we're falling behind.
• 10:17
  Matt Jacob: Fear that if we're not seen, we don't exist.
• 10:20
  Matt Jacob: Some of the most meaningful shifts in your art will happen long before there's anything to show in them.
• 10:27
  Matt Jacob: In your taste, in your patience, in what you choose not to photograph anymore.
• 10:33
  Matt Jacob: None of that is visible, yet all of it matters.
• 10:37
  Matt Jacob: So the practical challenge is simple, though not easy.
• 10:46
  Matt Jacob: Delay proof.
• 10:47
  Matt Jacob: Let images exist without witness.
• 10:49
  Matt Jacob: Allow work to remain unresolved and stay with the discomfort long enough for something internal to shift before asking the world to respond.
• 10:59
  Matt Jacob: And if you notice anxiety when work remains unseen, ask what role sharing is playing.
• 11:05
  Matt Jacob: Are you sharing to communicate or to reassure yourself that the time wasn't wasted?
• 11:11
  Matt Jacob: Are you offering something or asking for proof in return?
• 11:16
  Matt Jacob: So practice sitting with uncertainty deliberately, not as a performance of stillness and not as another metric to conquer, but as training in staying present without necessarily needing a result.
• 11:30
  Matt Jacob: For me, meditation has been part of my life for almost a decade.
• 11:38
  Matt Jacob: Not as withdrawal from life, but as a way of moving through responsibility without necessarily being destabilized by it.
• 11:47
  Matt Jacob: Equanimity is not about renouncing ambition.
• 11:51
  Matt Jacob: It is about not being owned by the outcomes.
• 11:54
  Matt Jacob: You cannot make meaningful work without understanding what you actually care about deeply.
• 12:01
  Matt Jacob: And you cannot access that without some level of introspection.
• 12:06
  Matt Jacob: Reflection and stillness often do the real work long, long before the camera comes out and that shutter button is pressed.
• 12:13
  Matt Jacob: If your work feels uncertain, unfinished, or uncomfortable, that may not be a sign you're doing anything wrong at all.
• 12:20
  Matt Jacob: It may just be a sign you're finally doing it honestly.
• 12:25
  Matt Jacob: I also want to be clear about something because this came up in multiple conversations in my book club community around this topic.
• 12:36
  Matt Jacob: My reflection that I've just talked about came from temporarily losing a level of activity that has been normal and ingrained in me for a very long time.
• 12:44
  Matt Jacob: Three weeks without being able to walk properly, run, train, shoot, or operate at my usual rhythm may sound minor from the outside, and objectively, of course, it is.
• 12:54
  Matt Jacob: But perspective is always relative.
• 12:56
  Matt Jacob: For me, it exposed a reflex that I found interesting that I wanted to watch.
• 13:01
  Matt Jacob: That reflex was the subject of the piece, not a comparison of circumstances.
• 13:06
  Matt Jacob: Long stretches of enforced stillness, ambiguity, or limp capacity are not philosophical exercises for everyone, of course.
• 13:14
  Matt Jacob: And I don't pretend to universalize my experience.
• 13:17
  Matt Jacob: All I'm doing is examining my own patterns.
• 13:21
  Matt Jacob: When I speak about culture training, this reflex, I'm referring to metrics, devices, analytics, visibility, specifically in photography.
• 13:30
  Matt Jacob: Because the broader environment we operate in, even if it doesn't shape everyone equally, is undeniably pervasive.
• 13:38
  Matt Jacob: Tracking progress for me is not about ego.
• 13:42
  Matt Jacob: It's about stewardship.
• 13:43
  Matt Jacob: When you run multiple businesses, projects, teams, and communities, structure is practical and necessary.
• 13:50
  Matt Jacob: Measurement can be a support rather than a tyranny.
• 13:54
  Matt Jacob: But the question is what we define as progress.
• 13:57
  Matt Jacob: The danger is not in structure, it's in letting visibility become the sole definition of value.
• 14:03
  Matt Jacob: So you may inhabit a very different baseline from mine, of course.
• 14:07
  Matt Jacob: We all do.
• 14:08
  Matt Jacob: That's not conflict, that's simply the nature of being human.
• 14:12
  Matt Jacob: But if you recognize the reflex to seek proof in your own creative life, if you feel uneasy when you're not posting, say, if self-doubt creeps in when work remains unseen, then perhaps this will resonate with you because this is how it felt for me.
• 14:30
  Matt Jacob: Nothing has gone wrong, you're not behind.
• 14:32
  Matt Jacob: You may simply be in the part of the process that cannot yet be proven.
• 14:37
  Matt Jacob: And that is often exactly where meaningful work begins.
• 14:41
  Matt Jacob: Happy shooting.