I tend to get obsessive about hobbies, then change them every two or three years. My current hobbies are TCGs (Pokemon and Magic the Gathering), but before that it was competitive pistol shooting.
Shooting is the hobby that stuck the longest. I think that this is because it was the most gamified hobby that I’ve had. Each target comes with feedback. Each match you shoot in stacks you up against other shooters. There are awards that are non-trivial to obtain.
Perhaps even more than gamification, shooting is also an activity where your competition is yourself. Rather than beating others, the focus is much more on preparation and execution of a shot plan. This always felt a bit zen to me.
I think that this focus on competing against yourself is perhaps the strongest competition. After all, many of us are our own worst enemies.
One of my favorite phrases from the bullseye community was from John Bickar:
Get your X count up!
— John Bickar
John and others would always leave this as a comment any time someone posted a target that was a 100 but without 10 X’s.
In the competitive pistol shooting that I did, targets have rings from X to 5. An X counts the same as the 10 point ring, but the X works as a tie breaker.
Looking at the target above, this would be scored as a 100-6X. Now, that’s pretty good and I could choose to be happy and pat myself on the back. Or, I could choose to get back to work and figure out how to get to 100-10X.
Most things in life have an “X count”, some measurement of craft or precision. Don’t settle for mediocrity.
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