We all have goals, some of them far arching and grand, but those are sometimes years if not decades down the line. The work needed to achieve those goals is immense and will take maybe decades of effort. That’s rather daunting, so we need some short term goals and some frivolous goals to tide us over some we don’t feel like we’re spinning our wheels and not getting anything done. Who knows, somebody may appreciate your effort and give you the break you need.
So let’s talk about some short term and rather unimportant goal examples and some unexpected recognition examples. Both of these come from my love for games and we’ll start off with a short term goal of mine.
A couple of years ago, a friend of mine got me hooked on this game called War Thunder, a plane and tank combat simulator. It was a fantastic game, they had casual/arcade, realistic, and full on simulator levels of game play with varying skill levels for each. It was one of the few games I have ever become nearly addicted to. The bones in my hand would literally ache to play the game when I thought about it and I would pour more time than was good into it. This doesn’t change the fact that I absolutely miss the air combat and tank combat. The reason was that I was surprisingly good at both. War Thunder was one of my first online player vs player experience with direct control over my character like all the console games I had played before. I could generally enter any match and come out with at least one kill and a decent amount of money to cover the in game costs of running a small army. But graphical updates and a few other things made it so I couldn’t play War Thunder anymore without having to suffer through 5 frame per second speeds. This meant that the game was moving at a fraction of the rate that human eyes process information (roughly 60 frames per second equivalent). This actually would hurt my eyes and cause me to over compensate for motion and things which made it more likely for me to lose and waste effort.
One of my current short term goals is to get/build a computer with enough power to it to be able to run War Thunder on full graphics and to be able to play other online games that I find interesting but don’t currently have the computing power to play. I also want to be able to play current games better with the faster processing abilities. A computer with that power and speed would be, if I did it correctly, about $800 to $1500 USD. A bit of a high price, but it would also be powerful enough for me to do all my current work and then some, like processing video, editing, and generally build courses and other online content better. It wouldn’t just be a toy for my amusement, I would be using it almost every single day for a variety of things.
Now the effort to achieve short term goals like my own is significantly less than some longer term goals. Some people want to own a house, land, etc. that are much more expensive than my personal computer dreams. But the effort to achieve that still needs to be put forth. And sometimes that effort will be recognized and rewarded at even the most random of times.
I was playing some RuneScape recently, completing a slayer task that required ranged (RuneScape’s archery/non magical long ranged attack skills) equipment to do easily. I’m minding my own business, attacking these creatures that are weak to crossbow bolts. This much higher level individual comes by and tells me he’s proud of me and gives me a 100k in game. I’m completely confused by this and ask him why he’s proud. He tells me he was at one time a ranged pure (solely training ranged for combat) and that I was going about training ranged the right way. He then gave me advice on making in game money and other training tips. I thanked him and he went on his way.
Things like that interaction can happen in real life. The show of genuine effort despite the odds can be recognized by someone who traveled the path before you. They probably won’t give a $100k to help you along but they will give you praise and advice. And the advice that they earned themselves is much more valuable than money, because it’s less you have to figure out yourself. It’s also kind of the basis of coaching. Someone has figured out what works and they impart that to you saving you time and effort so that you spend most of that time and effort on things that will actually work.
There’s also the mental factor of receiving praise from someone you don’t really know, but has done what you’re trying to do. It reinforces the belief that you can achieve your goal and that you’re going about it the right way.
Think about it.
Sincerely,
The Irreverent Gentleman
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