Something I’ve noticed about myself is that I always measure my success in numbers, as many types of media that I use enable me to put numbers to accomplishments and push myself to my limits.  However, a lot of the time these numbers give me unrealistic expectations and I set my goals too high.  I’ll explain this through three examples from my life.

A trivial example is Facebook friends and Twitter followers.  As a freshman in high school, I thought it was super important to have the most friends and followers, and I watched the numbers on the side of my accounts as they crept higher and higher.  I remember looking at popular Twitter accounts and wishing I could have the thousands of followers that they did.  Looking back, this was a ridiculous mindset to have.  But I guess it was real at the time.

A more relevant example of my number goals takes place when I’m erging at crew.  The rowing machines have monitors that display numbers and tell you the distance, time, and rate at which you are rowing.  For the past four years, I’ve consistently pushed myself to unrealistic points as I watch the numbers on the monitor drop.  These unrealistic goals sometimes result in disappointment, sickness, or both, and end up lessening my confidence for more realistic rowing goals.

A final example comes with school and grades.  Although numbers on a piece of paper can’t be considered media, our calculators serve this function as they process the numbers we put into them.  I often find that after completing a school assignment or receiving a grade back, I quickly pull out my calculator or phone to see what possible grade I could have gotten.  Again, I set my standards too high by constantly worrying about the numbers and I end up focusing more on grades than actual learning.

So pretty much all of my goals are oriented around the numbers that media and new technologies provide me with to determine my success.  I hope to eventually overcome my need to measure myself against a number so that I can make realistic goals that I can actually achieve.