I always keep score.
It’s one of my more unfortunate habits, one of my insidious character traits. I’m the kind of person who probably should not own a fitness tracker. Or maybe even Excel. I’ve been tracking my daily habits in a spreadsheet since 2007. I compete against myself at least as much as against anyone else. Well, maybe not on Facebook and Instagram. I can admit that, because I can tell many of you are playing the same game.
Keeping up with the Joneses used to be just the actual Joneses—or whatever last names your neighbors, coworkers, and closest social circle had. Now, we compete against all of our acquaintances, our old classmates, and an Internet full of strangers. That only adds to the stakes. It makes it harder to stand out, let alone to win. The weight of that competition is probably why anxiety and depression are at all-time highs.
Between you and me, I like the game. Thanks to thousands of dollars a year in free airfare, laughable amounts of serendipity, and incredible friendships, the social media game is one of the few in which I can play at a competitive level. Recently, though, I was confronted about my complicity in the madness. It came from an unlikely place: one of my favorite tracking apps.
In 2019, I played 85 rounds of disc golf. I played 38 of those rounds at a challenging course on the backside of a local mountain. Just like at a traditional, white-ball golf course, you can play rounds from a choice of tees. The red tees fit my skill level. They’d be the ladies or seniors tees at your local country club. The white tees aren’t just longer; they’re sometimes in more precarious locations. The tournament tees are just ridiculous; I’ve never played a single round from them. On the UDisc app, they’re called the “Pro Tees.”
Yes, there’s an app. You knew I’d have one, right? It connects to other UDisc users so that one person can keep score and the stats go to everyone’s account and their copy of the app at the end of the round. It tracks all kinds of stuff beyond just scores, but we mostly use it for knowing the throwing order on each tee and to alert each other when we accomplish something notable on a hole or course. Local leagues use it for handicapping, as contestants compete against their course average instead of each other.
When you start a new round in the app, it asks you which set of tees you’re using. For some reason, at the mountain course, it lists them out of order: middle, short, and then long. Since the middle length is named “Amateur” and is weirdly listed first, I didn’t read the whole list. Thus, I spent half a year or more putting in our red-tee scores as white-tee accomplishments. Because their pars are different, it rendered our average scores incorrectly—making them appear better than they were. And because those scores determine our handicaps, I made it slightly harder for us to do well in tournaments. Not just me: anybody I played with who had a UDisc account.
If you just skipped those nerdy paragraphs, here’s the summary:
I was keeping score of the wrong things.
At first, I was embarrassed. Then I grew introspective. Then convicted. See, I’ve been keeping the wrong score my whole life. In grade school, it was who got the best grades. In high school, it was who had the most of their own money saved for college. In college, it was who scored the hottest girlfriend. In my twenties, it was who won the most awards and acquired a mortgage first. In my thirties, it became the most unique vacation photos—the kind that flipped the most reaction emoji.
The same has been true in my faith journey. For decades, I used various scorecards to determine if I was on par. Or if I looked like I was on par. Measurables like church service attendance, memorization, and “quiet time” streaks came first. Then more qualitative measurements: what Bible translation I read, what media I didn’t consume, and what I wore to church. Once those faded, I sought checkmarks for leadership responsibility, mentions from the stage, thank you notes, and the people who called me their friend offline.
But whoever wrote Ecclesiastes pre-wrote my journal—and maybe even read the thoughts I’ve never transcribed. It wasn’t that I couldn’t score points, couldn’t win some comparisons. No, it was that the accomplishments wore off, if they wore at all. “That’s it!?” It led me to rethink my scoring system and then even the benefit of scoring anything. Both my pastor and my therapist had to ask me if I’d still go on my adventures or travel to the remote destinations I do if I couldn’t share them on social media. I was asked to consider a life that wasn’t a game, that didn’t have winners and losers. I was confronted with the notion that feeling better about myself came at the expense of others feeling less than.
I still keep track of my daily habits—the step stones I determined 13 years ago would get me closer to the ideal me. (I’m up 57% per month since I started. So, that’s good.) I still track my daily steps, my sleep quality, and how many hours I spend with nonfiction books. My bathroom scale still sends data to my iPhone. But I’ve been enjoying more things in the moment, either intentionally not capturing them, deliberately sharing them only with family or close friends offline, or at least purposefully putting them in Instastories where the records disappear in 24 hours. I’ve grown more content with my annual income and have started to chase working fewer hours and fewer days. I’ve had fewer “morning devotions” and more tear-rinsed walks with Jesus in the woods. My prayers are getting shorter or filled with long, silent pauses. I’ve been celebrating the accomplishments of others more and working hard not to play the One Better card in conversations.
I don’t need an app for that, and I don’t have to pay attention to how I input that data even if there were an app. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not even close to getting out of the comparison game. I have a feeling that I’ll be working on that until the last time I close my eyes. But I’m getting more comfortable playing life for its inherent pleasure instead of determining how to game the system so I can win.
