Growing up I played baseball, ran track & field, studied piano, participated in the cub\/boy scouts, etc. During that time I accumulated a number of trophies, medals, plaques, ribbons and so on. Of course I didn’t win\/advance to the next level all the time or on the first try, and the reasons for receiving them varied wildly in perceived level of achievement from “best” 8 year old pianist in New Jersey (according to the New Jersey Federation of Music Teachers) to toilet bowl champions (in a roller-hockey division of 8 teams, the top 4 played in the “real” playoffs and the bottom 4 played in a consolation play-off i.e. the toilet bowl). Nonetheless, these experiences instilled a desire to perform at a hight level and\/or a clear distinction between a “win” and a “loss”. In other words, they turned me into a “goal oriented” person. Rarely if at all do I find myself doing something because I enjoy it or because it makes me happy, etc. Happiness, joy and their synonyms are bereft of meaning in a goal oriented framework, replaced by words such as satisfaction and fulfilment. Many people in our society hold those who have legitimate goals in a higher regard when compared to aimless wanderers. Held in even higher regard are those who set goals and subsequently achieve them.<\/p>\n
With that in mind, accomplishing goals, whether they’re cleaning the bathroom or finding a cure for cancer might stand as the most valuable use of one’s time. If so, then doing anything else that doesn’t contribute to achieving those goals can be construed as a waste of time. To a degree, one can reduce the amount of wasted time by re-framing a given task or activity such that it helps to achieve one’s goals, but doing so too often dilutes the spirit of what a goal is in the first place. After the fact, I sometimes mentally reprimand myself for watching TV instead of learning a foreign language (claiming watching TV helps my goal to be more in-tune with popular culture is a bit thin) or surfing the Internet instead of going for a run.<\/p>\n
A chicken and egg problem exists as one has to set a goal before attempting to accomplish it. Many times, just setting a goal can be a daunting process. As a child many of the milestones were not only pre-determined, but at a coarse grained level, they were also structured to be achievable and build on one other. As an adult there are still examples of this e.g. completing a tri-athalon, but there are many more opportunities to choose and define one’s goals as well as to sit around and do nothing.<\/p>\n
Playing video games is one way to feel [see fool oneself] as if you’re accomplishing something even if it doesn’t map to anything in the real world. Taken too far, one could easily end up as a WoW addict endlessly grinding away at new tasks. I consider myself somewhere between a casual and avid gamer and have found the Xbox360 achievement system adds considerable value to the gaming experience. Reason #1 is that the achievements span a wide range of skill levels, some only requiring completing a walk-through, and other necessitating performing complex maneuvers in a certain order over a non-trivial amount of time.<\/p>\n
The other night I found myself lacking motivation to do anything “productive”, but also not ready to tune out and watch TV. I had been casually trying (I play the game once every few months) to get the “mother lode” achievement in Super Puzzle Fighter for over a year and decided to try again. I thought it might be easier in the early rounds, but that turned out not to be the case. Eventually in the 7th round I received an unusually large sequence of yellow gems and was able to build a 25 unit power gem, which I subsequently destroyed, earning the achievement. I also won the 7th round and realized that I had not used any continues yet. That meant if I won the 8th and 9th rounds without losing, I would also garner the “quarter miser” achievement, something else which I had been casually trying to collect.<\/p>\n
After that, I called it a day, video game wise. I won’t lie and say I didn’t feel good about myself, even though I know I didn’t accomplish something too meaningful. Then again, in a few months I won’t be playing Super Puzzle Fighter trying to build and destroy a 25 unit or larger power gem…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Growing up I played baseball, ran track & field, studied piano, participated in the cub\/boy scouts, etc. During that time I accumulated a number of trophies, medals, plaques, ribbons and so on. Of course I didn’t win\/advance to the next level all the time or on the first try, and the reasons for receiving them […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madpickles.org\/rokjoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madpickles.org\/rokjoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madpickles.org\/rokjoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madpickles.org\/rokjoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madpickles.org\/rokjoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.madpickles.org\/rokjoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":175,"href":"https:\/\/www.madpickles.org\/rokjoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions\/175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madpickles.org\/rokjoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madpickles.org\/rokjoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madpickles.org\/rokjoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}