[CQ-Contest] Improving Concentration

[David Pruett]

Doug Smith W9WI wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-01-05 at 08:29, George Fremin III wrote:
>   
>>   So over the years I have avoided having 
>>   these around or setting goals like that - it just did not work for me.
>>     
>
> Something that helps for me (though not enough judging from the number
> of part-time entries<grin>) is to set very short-term goals.
>
> For example, if I have 367 QSOs, my goal is 400.  Once I have 400 QSOs,
> I notice I have 48 mults.  My goal becomes 50 mults.  Once I have 50
> mults, I notice my raw score is 78,223; my goal becomes 80,000 points. 
> By the time I have 80,000 points, I might have 471 QSOs, so the goal
> becomes 500.  I keep pushing for the next even number -- there's always
> an achievable goal hanging in front of me.  Until with two hours to go, 
> the goal becomes simply to stay awake until the end of the
> contest<grin>!
>   
I remember something the late Bill Fisher, W4AN told me about what he 
did.  He would mentally break the contest into one hour chunks, and 
treated each one like its own contest.  It was for this reason that we 
added the "Contest By Hour" real time window to my NA logging program, 
which showed hour-by-hour the number of QSOs, mults, and QSO points 
scored in the last few hours.  Bill's goal was to beat the previous hour 
as the contest went along.

This is just another way to look at intermediate, or short term goals, 
which is why I tacked this onto Doug's contribution to the thread.  
Personally, I need to look at the contest on a basis like this, for the 
reasons K5TR listed in his e-mail on the topic.  I don't enjoy contests 
where the objective is cut-and-dried, and all it takes is one bad hour 
to wreck your enthusiasm.  SS CW is particularly challenging in this 
regard - if you're SOHP, the operating patterns to success (what N4AR 
refers to as "the right moves") and the necessary rates are pretty much 
the same from year to year.  In a DX contest, at least there is some 
variation in what you can expect (at least from W8) where conditions 
vary from year to year and can have a greater impact on your score.

73,

Dave/K8CC