There’s just another 13 days left but still just two tantalising baskets to shoot before I hit target of 26 baskets in under 26 minutes. Mind you, what do you do when you hit target? Generate another one of course.
Not content with shooting 26 basketballs in under 26 minutes (something unheard of for me not 14 days ago), the target driven mind decides to up the ante and find increasingly intricate ways to move the metaphorical goal posts (see Day 11 for further reasoning on this process).
26 baskets in under 26 minutes? Meaningless. Better change it to the fastest 26 baskets in under 26 minutes. Better than that, aim for the maximum number of baskets you can shoot in 26 minutes. Better than that even, maximise the effort, minimise the feel good factor and aim for a ration of 1 basket per shot per second for 26 minutes: ie 1,560 consecutive baskets. This would give Anthony MIracola (see Day Seven) something to think about, even if it is an impossibly unrealistic target in the scheme of things.
But when did realism ever have anything to do with setting targets, hitting them and then resetting them with elevated levels of unrealism injected into them? There’s something about a target culture which is both alluring, frustrating but ultimately addictive.
Quite whether our broader target driven culture is actually making lives better for our children and young people is another matter, but you can be sure that as eggs is eggs (or until they become super-eggs), we won’t stop redefining them and setting ourselves increasingly ridiculous challenges, all for the sakes of some interesting statistics.
Which today, for those who are addicted to such things look like this:
Or, as Billy Fury once crooned:
I’m only halfway to paradise
So near, yet so far away.
Dr Nick Owen MBE PLUS 