Goal Charts – A Passion, or just an Obsession?

A portion of my “Goal Chart”. This is like, half a page.

I’m staring at this LCD screen late into the night of summer vacation, tired and emotionally distraught, and one topic comes into mind. GOALS. The thing that makes every person work hard and keep them occupied and motivated so that one day that certain achievement would become a reality. As I connect this into athletics, goals are the one thing that makes a sport interesting. Every aspect of it, a weakness or strength to an athlete is something to work on, so that they’ll be able to achieve great success in the near future. Now the only question to ask from this topic is, “What is a goal chart”?

To keep it plain and simple, it’s your goals printed or saved somewhere around you so that you’ll be able to keep track of how close you are to true achievement by your standards. It could be a number of things ranging from times, number of hits, averages, people, etc. A goal chart is the number 1 things that is personal for you in any sport or in any given subject outside of a sport, but let’s try and keep it within the world of athletics. Now that we’ve got the definition of a goal chart established, are they really needed?

As I’ve said before, goal charts are a useful reminder of keeping track of your achievements until the top one is reached. Normally if you tell people you have a goal chart, they think you’re crazy. I’m certainly one of those people. When it comes to the sport of Track & Field, I feel as if a goal chart is necessary. It keeps me motivated whether I’m healthy or not to run around the big oval so that one day I’ll achieve a great goal. A little crazy, am I right? Well, I’m going to tell you right now it’s going to get a little crazier. I’ve compiled a goal chart over the past three years which includes results from every Divisional Track Meet in Massachusetts (1-4, Western, Central), and it’s currently a whopping 21 pages long! Alright, you can finally think I’m totally obsessed with this sport.

To me, I don’t qualify myself as one who’s completely obsessed with the sport itself. I mean, I do things that aren’t involved with Track & Field on a regular basis. Making that goal chart is probably the greatest decision I’ve ever made, however. I’ll blatantly admit that I’m truly not gifted in any aspect of a sport, but I feel Track & Field has a different thing to it. It doesn’t seem to matter whether or not you’re good or bad on a team like this. As long as you’re working hard and continuing to set goals for yourself, you’re totally fine. It’s not as if you’re getting cut for being not as gifted as someone else. Personally, getting cut makes you lose a little more motivation to improve because you get fewer chances to evaluate your own abilities.

So a goal chart, is it really your passion for the sport, or is it just your over-obsession for it? It’s something which is truly debatable (yet no one would debate on it) and something to think about when it comes to the world of athletics.