Mediocrity Rant

Just to be clear to those who can't understand this: tolerance of peer mediocrity does not increase with skill level. The worst is when people actually choose mediocrity over excellence. Especially when excellence is readily available.

It's Not About Winning

This weekend was spent at State Youth Games, a popular Christian sporting event where it is well understood and well insinuated that fun—rather than winning—is the aim of the game. Meanwhile, I am one of the most competitive people I know, and struggle to compete without wanting to win.

And so I thought it would be good to take a few statistics during the weekend of how my sporting success affected my mood. I took some basic number notes after each match of the four sports I played over the weekend, and came up with the following results. Note that I've rounded off the would-be ridged line to give a more realistic interpretation of the two variables measured.

But this graph doesn't really answer the question of how much winning affects my mood. So I've taken these raw results and shuffled them onto a new plane. On this graph, the closer my measurements are to the diagonal line, the more related my happiness and success apparently are, or in other words, the more important winning is to me.

It seems that I don't stick too much to the diagonal line, but definitely do hover around it. I guess this means that winning helps my mood, but doesn't control it. There are many other conclusions that can be drawn from this chart, but I'll leave you to make them. I'll just note one thing I find particularly interesting, and that is that my mood seems to be most happy when I am at a particular level of success. So too much winning equals bad. Who would have thought?