An e-mail sent to the Typeracer list 30SEP2009
Dear Typeracer friends,
I have recently noticed in myself a disturbing problem. Disturbing to me, at least. We all go on about how it's okay to quit when scores will be unrepresentative of our true skill. I appear to have taken this a bit far. I began by quitting catastrophically bad races, as is understandable. Of course, once these were factored out, my overall "performance" increased. At some point I decided that I didn't like scores under 100 WPM, and wasn't going to register them. This increased to 110, then, sometimes, 120. Eventually (recently) I was quitting races in which I failed to reach 130 WPM because, I think, I had become addicted to the growing numbers and climbing percentile I had attained. "Approval junkies", anyone? I like to keep track of my trends at http://jack.is/typist/ and I have found that as I am about to complete another set of one hundred, I will become more intent on raising my current average so I can have impressive numbers to post. At these points I am completing perhaps one race out of ten or more that I have entered.
I have decided that the best way to combat this growing issue is to avoid quitting altogether. This will have the admittedly undesirable effect of lowering my overall scores, but I feel that if I want a truly "representative" display of typing performance, this is the way to do it; not to strive neurotically for high scores.
Hopefully, in time, I can control my quitting and quit when actually necessary and beneficial; for now, I will avoid quitting to my utmost ability.
I feel a bit freer just thinking of it.
Oh, maybe you wonder why I'm telling you this. It seems that making known my intentions and desire for progress will help me to fulfill them, if only through perceived social pressure.
"Hello, my name is Jack."
"Hi, Jack."
"And I'm addicted to quitting."