Like Wei Dai said - the core problem (at least in my case) wasn't in the prestige-seeking by itself, it was in the cached and incorrect thoughts about what would lead to prestigious results, and the fact that those cached thoughts hijacked the reasoning process. If I had stopped to really think about whether the actions made any sense, I should have realized that such actions wouldn't lead to prestige, they would lead to screwing up (in the first and second example, at least). But instead I just went with the first cliché of prestige that my brain associated with this particular task.

If I had actually thought about it, I would have realized that there were better ways of both achieving the goal and getting prestige... but because my mind was so focused on the first cliché of prestige that came up, I didn't want to think about anything that would have suggested I couldn't do it. I subconsciously believed that if I didn't get prestige this way, I wouldn't get it in any other way either, so I pushed away any doubts about it.