Thursday, November 3, 2016

Goal setting . . . and achieving

I like setting goals or challenges for myself.  It gives me something to work for.  It seems I'm objective driven in my life.  I don't always meet those goals or succeed at those challenges but it's something to try for.

This summer I secretly set a goal for myself.  I didn't tell anyone because I didn't want the pressure of trying to meet it while everyone was watching.  I had about 37,000 in gamer score (can't remember the exact number I had at the time).  I wanted to break the 40,000 mark before the end of the year.  That meant I had to get almost 3,000 in achievements to do so (I think it might have been around 2,700 or so).  That's like finishing/perfecting 2 full games and then some.  Since I don't have all the time in the world to play games (I wish I did) I wasn't sure how long it would take me.  My goal was to do it before BM Vagabond cross the 100,000 threshold for gamer score . . . or by the end of the year in a worse case scenario.

I think I made this official the day Lego Star Wars came out.  I figured that was an easy 1,000 points to get.  I just needed to find another 1,700 or so to meet my goal.  I didn't know what games I would play to help me with that but I knew I would like to see my gamer score going up more regularly than in fits and spurts.

I also knew that I didn't stand a chance of getting my gamer score above 40,000 before BM Vagabond got his above 100,000.  After all, he plays video games for a living.  But I was hoping that he would spend a lot of time playing games he already had the achievements in so he's score wouldn't go up.  I also made sure to watch his twitch channel to keep an eye on his gamer score (sortamaliciousgaming).  Then the fateful night came.  He was going to stream and try to hit the 100,000 mark dead on . . . and before I hit my goal of 40,000.

Vaga was about the same distance away from his goal as I was from mine.  I checked weekly and we kept flip flopping each other as to who was getting closer.  On the night that he met his goal I had been almost 100 pts ahead of him and within 70 or so points of meeting my goal.  Unfortunately I have a full time job that doesn't allow me to play video games all day long.  There was no way I was going to be able to come home from work and get those 70 or so points in the hour that I had before his stream started.  So I didn't even try and just watched him try and play to get that score exactly.  It was fun.

I think I met my goal 2 or 3 nights later.  It wasn't anti-climatic for me because I was so excited to be out of the 30,000 and to finally see a different number in the front of my gamer score.  I think this happened about late August or early September.  That means I picked up almost 3,000 points in about 3 months.  Not bad. 

As of right this minute my gamer score is 41,027.  You can see I've picked up a few more points since then.  It's nice to see it moving upwards after it seemed like it was stagnate for so long.  It's still only 8% of the total gamer score I COULD have if I perfected all of the games I own.  If you don't believe me check this out from my log sheet:




I still have a long way to go, but I'm enjoying the ride and playing a lot more games that I have in the past.  I wonder where my gamer score will be at the end of the year.  45,000?  50,000?  Stay tuned and find out.

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